The Disaster Zone: Resurrection
by LMSharp
Summary: Part Five in the Disaster Zone series. Dying isn't like going on sabbatical. When Beth Shepard died, it changed the galaxy. And now that she's back, it isn't just going to change back. As Beth fights to escape Cerberus even as she works to bring down the Collectors, she finds that accepting how much her relationships have changed since Alchera may be a battle all its own. Set ME2.
1. Spaced

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Some two years prior to** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **I, "Passover."**

* * *

I

Spaced

Blown away.

Space isn't made of stars and planets, asteroids and comets. Mostly, space is empty, and black, and cold. Void. Void of matter or gravity or air. Life cannot survive in space.

An object in motion remains in motion with a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. When there are no external forces, it just keeps going. A woman blasted away from a ship into space, away from matter or gravity or air, just keeps going, at the velocity at which she was blasted away. So when she kicks her legs and jackknifes her body and flails her arms, but there's nothing to push against, nothing to pull against, no friction whatsoever, she Just. Keeps. Going. Away from the wreckage of the ship and the escape pods, out into space.

Spaced.

Nature abhors a vacuum, rushes to fill the emptiness, but a vacuum abhors nature, too. The gas in a severed oxygen line rushes out to fill the emptiness of space, but space rushes in to snuff out the woman lost in it. Mostly, space is empty, and space is big. In the struggle between the air from the oxygen tank and the vastness of empty space, space wins. The air has a long, long way to go, and it gets too thin for the woman kicking, jackknifing, flailing, traveling at the velocity at which she was blasted back from the wreckage of the ship and the escape pods, out into space, until she is acted upon by an external force.

Acted upon. How cruel, how utterly cruel that this particular woman should ever be so passive, at the mercy of cold, heartless physics. She has never been so helpless, never so inactive before. Always before, she has been the external force to cause change, never the object of another's action, never the victim. Before the blast hit, she saved a man's life. The pilot of the wrecked ship. Her friend. She effected that salvation upon him, caused the change that meant he'd live and wouldn't die. But now she cannot change her own state.

Space is mostly empty, but it is not entirely empty. It isn't stars and planets, asteroids and comets, but they do exist in it, and exert their own forces on a woman, drowning in emptiness with a severed oxygen line, trying desperately to exert her own force once again and control her fate. But a planet's force, a planet's gravity, is greater than that of one woman, even this very extraordinary one.

A woman, blown away, spaced, now caught in a planet's gravity, no longer drifting. Falling. Falling until she hits the air the planet's pulled around it and it begins to exert its own force upon her, too. Then falling, falling and burning as the gravity pulls her more and more strongly toward the planet below, and her own force against the air, resisting the change, resisting extinction, heats up the gas molecules. No longer drowning in emptiness, but the air is too hot to breathe, and the pressure is such that the woman's lungs can't even inflate as she begins to burn. Her hair catches fire first, inside her helmet. Then the rest.

Maybe she's dead already, maybe she's not, but if she's not, it won't be long. She'll be gone long before she hits the earth and is pulverized, a smear on the ground, bone fragments and blood and pulpy flesh.

Spaced. Then, tragically, not.

In her last conscious moments, her mind a haze of pain and panic, disordered from lack of oxygen, the laws of physics that have made her their plaything, the woman would scream if she could. But she can't. There is no air in her body with which to voice a sound. She can only cry out in her mind, _Nonononononono I'm not done yet I don't want to go don't make me nononono I don't want to die._ Then the pain or the pressure or the lack of oxygen is too much, and she blacks out. Then she is dead.

* * *

 **A/N: If this is the first fic in The Disaster Zone you've checked out—well. That was a depressing chapter to choose to make an entrance on. Welcome anyway. Have a look at the other entries in the series. In order they are:**

 _ **Nobody's Child**_

 _ **Little Beth**_

 _ **Soldier**_

 _ **Awakening**_

 **However, I would also like to announce another Mass Effect fic, outside of the Disaster Zone series. As you can see from the note above, this entry in The Disaster Zone comes alongside another fic in progress**. **While** _ **Resurrection**_ **follows the pattern of the other entries in that it is a focused series of one-shots devoted to the character development of Beth Shepard,** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **will be a complete novelization of** _ **Mass Effect 2**_ **(really my favorite in the series).** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **features Beth Shepard, but while she is the deuteragonist and catalyst for the story,** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **is more concerned with Garrus Vakarian's perspective, struggles, and development after his stint on Omega.**

 _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **is the reason updates to** _ **Resurrection**_ **will come once a week rather than twice a week. It is also the reason why after** _ **Resurrection**_ **, The Disaster Zone is going on indefinite (but certainly not permanent) hiatus. While I have no intention of making Disaster Zone fans wait for the appropriate chapter in SG to read more about Beth, posting** _ **Shepard**_ **before SG's conclusion just feels wrong. DZ fans may want to check out SG, or vice versa. I just want to keep you both informed.**

 **As ever, I welcome your input on the news or the story proper and will respond to each review personally, but response is not required.**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMSharp**


	2. Trust

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with the beginning of** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **II, "Raphael."**

* * *

II

Trust

Shepard walked into the portside observatory Kasumi had claimed for her quarters, and had her omni-tool up and scanning for bugs before Goto had even finished her cheery "Hey, Shep!"

"EDI, from the time I entered this room to the time I leave, the confidentiality protocol we enacted earlier applies," Shepard told the ceiling.

"Understood, Shepard," EDI replied.

Kasumi checked. "Whoa, we can do that?"

Shepard shook her head, moving around the room so her omni-tool could scan better. "You can't. I can. It's Alliance military protocol—the commanding officer on a ship in space can technically temporarily override any orders any crew member may have received prior to boarding the ship, no matter who gave them. I was surprised Cerberus was sloppy enough to write it into EDI's programming, but I'm certainly glad I checked. I wish you could all order EDI not to report your conversations, but it only works if you're talking to me and I give the order. Of course, I can't stop EDI from reporting to the Illusive Man _when_ I've had a confidential conversation, but I'll take whatever advantage I can get."

Shepard's omni-tool chimed, letting her know that there were no bugs or cameras monitoring the room. She looked at Kasumi—the entire ship was _wired_. Kasumi was smirking.

"Please," she answered Shepard's unspoken question. "The first thing I did in this room was disable the spyware. Not that I couldn't work around it." She demonstrated, cloaking. "It's the principle of the thing," she explained, uncloaking right in front of Shepard.

Shepard cut straight to business. "You got in alright?"

Kasumi hesitated. Her hood turned toward the door. "You sure you want to do this now, Shep?" She glanced back at Shepard. "You don't look so good."

Shepard waved a hand, dismissing the concern. "Now's as good a time as any."

Kasumi frowned, but she let it go. "If you say so." She brought up her omni-tool. "Nice call clocking Miranda's schedule. Half hour—from 1500 to 1530 hours, just like you said. More than enough time for me. You sure you haven't done this before? I mean, there was the Hock heist, but—"

"I never said I hadn't done this before." She didn't talk about it, didn't even like to think about it, but there'd been a few times she'd done recon and gathered information for the Reds before a job.

"Shepard's hidden depths!" Kasumi teased. "Alliance hero, Spectre, and master criminal!"

Shepard folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. Kasumi seemed to realize it was a sensitive subject at last, and fell silent. Shepard returned to the point. "Lawson doesn't trust me to manage the crew yet. Don't know why, since it's what she _brought me back from the dead to do_ , but it means she runs rounds like an officer. Every day, 1500 to 1530 like clockwork. Simple. What'd you find?"

"Nothing unexpected," Kasumi answered. "You were right—she's not just reading your mail, she's screening it. Everything you get goes through Miranda first. I took care of that, though."

"Wait, what?" Shepard yelped. "I didn't want to do that! Now she'll know—"

Kasumi giggled. "Relax, Shepard. All I did was reroute the server so your mail comes to you a half second before Miranda can see and block it. She's still _reading_ your mail. She can even hit a button to hold it, for all the good it'll do. I may have written a teensy little virus to screen the change. She'll never know we've been there."

Shepard was surprised into excitement. "Kasumi, you're fantastic!" she cried.

"Tell me something I don't know," Kasumi preened. Then she made a face, so Shepard knew they'd come to the bad news. "I took a look at the audio files on her computer, too, but there we're out of luck. All the data the spyware picks up from around the ship goes to EDI first. Sometimes Miranda can listen in to a conversation _while_ it's happening, you know, if she's got nothing better to do and no one else is in her office, but mostly, she just gets bits and pieces later for analysis, and the rest of it stays with EDI. I can take on Miranda's security. I'm not quite good enough to hack EDI."

"While your abilities are very impressive, I estimate that it would take several years of unbroken study for you to reach _that_ level of proficiency, Ms. Goto," EDI cut in, "Or perhaps the assistance of another synthetic lifeform."

Kasumi jumped, and glared at Shepard. "I thought you said you turned her off!" she accused.

"I gave her orders not to keep this conversation in her records," Shepard corrected her. "Even I can't switch EDI _off_."

"Um . . . sorry, EDI," Kasumi said. "You're not upset I was talking about hacking you, are you?"

"No. However, if I thought you were capable of it, I might be worried," EDI replied. "As it is, I am not surprised. Commander Shepard's background and experience means her current distrust of Cerberus and Cerberus oversight is an entirely rational response. Given her position of authority, the friendship between you, and the covert nature of your occupation, it is also logical for you to act on her distrust. But as long as the Commander's distrust does not become active hostility, Yeoman Chambers believes it may actually help her to make a healthy readjustment to life."

"Yeoman Chambers told you that, did she?" Shepard growled under her breath. "Dismissed, EDI," she said, more loudly.

"Signing off."

Kasumi was clearly bothered by the turn Beth's mood had taken. "Shepard, are you alright?" she asked again.

"Peachy," Shepard snarled. Kasumi glanced toward the door again. Shepard glared at her, daring her to say it. The Japanese thief didn't take the bait.

Instead, she cleared her throat and returned to business. "There was just one more thing. While I was in Miranda's office, going through the audio banks, a live feed came up from the armory—if I wanted to listen to it. It was Miranda and Jacob, and they were having a _very_ interesting discussion. I recorded it, just in case you wanted to listen later." Kasumi's fingers hovered over the sound file on her omni-tool.

"Well, go on, play it!" Shepard told her. Kasumi grinned, and played the file.

The sound quality was poor, like maybe the listening device in the armory had been placed under a table a good ways away from Taylor's post, but the two voices that came through were clearly distinguishable.

 _"I can't believe command missed this._ " Miranda sounded angry, worried. " _Bringing in a vigilante from Omega was risky enough, but now he turns out to be Garrus Vakarian? The Garrus Vakarian? You're certain: he'll be fine?"_

 _"That's what the doc says."_ Jacob. _"He's one tough son of a bitch. He's not getting out of a rocket to the face without a scar, but Shepard got him here quick enough. Garrus'll have full functionality."_

 _"He's trouble. I requisitioned files from C-Sec and the Hierarchy as soon as I found out. A history of rebellion against authority,_ devoted _to Shepard, you_ saw _what he did on Omega. Shepard is already looking for a way out: you know she is. With the two of them . . . I've contacted the Illusive Man, but he seems to think this is still a good idea. Dammit, I wish he'd let me implant her."_

 _"You know that's why Shepard's looking for a way out?"_ Jacob sounded amused. _"Relax, Miranda. Shepard's the best. You wanted her, you worked like hell to bring her back. You've got her, and now we have to trust her."_

 _"Trust is something few can afford. I certainly can't."_

 _"I'll tell you this: you mess with Vakarian and you'll lose Shepard for good, and she'll probably toss you out the airlock to top it off,"_ Jacob said. _"I talked to her earlier. She trusts him."_

Kasumi paused the recording. "What'd you say to Jacob, anyway?" she asked. "From the way he's talking, it almost sounds like you shoved a gun in his face."

Shepard shrugged. "He was pumping me for information. I gave it to him: Garrus was the best damn member of my squad when we went after Saren, and the one guy I'd have picked first to have with me in this mess. It's not my fault if he didn't like the news." She folded her arms. Truth was she almost _had_ threatened Taylor this morning when they'd talked. She hadn't been in the best of moods then, either, and for all that she thought she might eventually be able to work with Taylor, she didn't trust him much further than Lawson and respected him a hell of a lot less. Miranda at least had been up front from the beginning that she was Cerberus's bitch through and through. She was sold out. Taylor knew what Cerberus was, though, and he was _still_ with them. So if Taylor wasn't a terrorist, wasn't in line with human supremacy and all of Cerberus's sketch ops, he was either an idiot that thought he was too smart to be used, or a man whose conscience, however intelligible, wasn't strong enough to overcome whatever other motivations he had. And he'd been trying to play both sides since they'd met. Done the buddy act this morning, and she _had_ talked to him, for all she hadn't been too friendly. Then he'd turned around this afternoon and reported right back to Miranda.

Kasumi seemed to realize she wasn't getting any more details. She resumed playing the recording. _"But it's more than that,"_ Jacob continued. _"Shepard_ died. _Vakarian is about the only damn friend she's got left in the galaxy. She cares about him. A lot. You touch that? I don't know what she'll do."_

Shepard tensed. It'd been a mistake to talk to Taylor. Not only was he reporting to Miranda, he was more observant than she'd given him credit for, and he had seen more than she'd wanted him to see. She was acutely conscious of Kasumi standing across from her, acutely conscious Kasumi _had already heard_ this conversation.

 _"I know. I'm not blind. You should have seen her when he was shot. But she talked to you? Why? She could've come to me."_

 _"Maybe because I asked her, instead of going straight for Vakarian's files."_

He had a point there, and Shepard grudgingly awarded it to him. There was a pause, and then Miranda took up the conversation again, speaking softly. _"I liked her better on the slab. I don't know what to_ do _with her now she's up, Jacob. She . . . she's everything I thought she'd be, that I told the Illusive Man she was. I didn't anticipate how I'd handle that without the control chip. She's not an Unknown. I know exactly how she'll handle any situation. But I can't stop her. She'll stop the Collectors. But she's not Cerberus."_

 _"She's not. Maybe that's a good thing. Just . . . try, Miranda. I get the feeling she'll meet us halfway if we do."_

There was a sharp, mirthless laugh. _"Do you? I get the feeling she'll drag us in completely new directions. She'll_ own _us, Jacob. She's already started on you."_

Shepard shook her head, suddenly feeling dirty. "Stop the recording," she said. Kasumi shut it off at once. "Delete it," Shepard ordered. She turned away and paced to the other side of the room. She heard the beep as Kasumi deleted the audio file.

The silence was a taut rubber band, just a millimeter from snapping and stinging someone's wrist. This time, though, Kasumi infringed upon it. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"You've got Miss Perfect scared," Goto offered. "That's good, right? I mean, you _really_ don't like Cerberus, and Miranda's the strongest agent onboard."

"Miranda's not my enemy," Shepard said, surprised to find she thought it was true. "I don't want her to be afraid of me. We have to work together, at least for the time being. This," Beth gestured at Kasumi, at the omni-tool, at the XO's office, all of it. "The idea was just to get a little more leash, feel a little less like a prisoner onboard my own ship. But if she—" she broke off. "This was wrong," she decided. "Fixing the email routing is one thing. That's self-defense. And I appreciate you helping me to find what she's got on me, but I don't want to spy on _Miranda_." She shook her head again and took another step back. "Listening in on private conversations—it makes me like Cerberus."

It was a tactless thing to say to a professional thief and infiltrator, but Kasumi took it in stride. "I understand," she said. "It's forgotten, Shep. But the other stuff—about Garrus—"

Beth cut her off there. "Doctor Chakwas says he'll be fine," she said, turning away. "She knows what she's talking about. There's no reason to worry."

Apparently they'd reached the end of Goto's discipline, though, because she plowed forward despite the implicit order to forget it. "He's your friend, Shepard," she said. "I wasn't there, but Zaeed was talking about how it was when he got hit."

Shepard closed her eyes. _That_ had been a bigger lapse of self-control than she'd had in the field for years. When she'd seen Garrus on the ground choking on his blood, gasping for breath, and Massani had said he wasn't going to make it—she'd almost punched him, and she _had_ thrown him out of the base. She'd done it without even realizing it. Through the whole thing it'd been like she was watching from the outside, somehow frozen, detached. Because that couldn't possibly be _Garrus_ on the ground, just half an hour after she'd found him again. That couldn't be _Garrus_ dying in that shining pool of bright blue blood, with his face blown half to hell. And that couldn't be her there, with his blood on her gauntlets, too (there had been so much blood!) from where she was trying to stem the flow, that couldn't be her mouth running the unbroken stream of desperate prayers and broken pleas, garbled orders and invective that it'd been a miracle Miranda had been able to interpret with anything approximating coherency. She had _lost_ it.

Shepard had seen Garrus to the med bay on the _Normandy_ , and hadn't set foot there since, even after Chakwas had said he'd be fine this morning and cleared him for a mission briefing tomorrow, so long as he stayed off duty for at least another week. Instead of visiting him like a decent friend, she'd been haunting the mess like a ghost, just staring at the blinded window of the med bay, too cowardly to enter, and trying to distract herself with any piece of paltry ship's business she could that would probably keep until next week, or next month. Like this email thing.

"Shepard, when was the last time you slept?" Kasumi asked. Her voice was quiet, careful. "Have you seen him at all?"

Beth let her breath out, thin and ragged, and opened her eyes. Gripping her left hand hard in her right, behind her back so the thief couldn't see, with a voice barely keeping steady she said, "Thank you for your concern, Kasumi, but I'll be just fine. I think we're done here?"

There was a bitter, all-too-aware uptwist of Kasumi's mouth, but she nodded. "Yeah. We're done," she confirmed.

"Dismissed, then," Shepard said. She turned on her heel, and left.

Of course she went back to the mess again. She sat across from Rupert's station, declined his offer to make her an early supper just like she'd declined his offer of food almost every other time she'd wound up here in the past three days, and turned away from the table and toward the med bay, brooding.

There was a reason she'd kept her distance from the troops since Akuze. And she hadn't known—she really hadn't known how much that had changed when she'd become a Spectre and gone after Saren until she'd died and come back alone and surrounded by enemies. Those first two weeks, especially, she'd been going out of her mind.

It was realizing the galaxy had moved on without her, that the smear campaign that hadn't even started yet before she'd died was finished now, that the Alliance wasn't even prepared to acknowledge her existence and the Council wanted her dead again or out of their jurisdiction in the Terminus systems, for all they still nominally called her a Spectre. It was realizing no one but Cerberus and Anderson believed in the Reapers at all, and that Anderson had proved to be an even worse politician than she'd ever thought.

It was finding a scar on her body she didn't remember every time she took a shower, having to blink every time she looked in a mirror before recognizing her reflection. It was wondering what the hell else Miranda had put in her, what the hell a person who'd come back from the dead was, anyway. It was seeing Tali jerk away on Freedom's Progress, repulsed and a little afraid, hearing her friend call her 'Commander Shepard,' while her voice was unsure. It was the constant nausea of working with the people that had been responsible for Akuze, for Kohoku and his men, for Toombs, of seeing Jeff and Karin Chakwas hostage on the new _Normandy_ and completely unaware of it. Worst of all, it was knowing none of that mattered, because she'd been to Freedom's Progress and she'd _seen_ what the Collectors had done there, and Cerberus was the only one willing to work to stop it, the only one that believed in the Reapers.

It was like the Reds. Needing a group she hated, unable to break away. Caught between Nash and the heavies on the one side, the back alleys and streets without any protection on the other, running the obstacle course of trying to stay in the gang without selling her soul or getting a serious rap sheet. Beth hadn't tasted _that_ particular heady cocktail of scared and angry in eleven years.

 _Thirteen_.

And it had taken her utterly by surprise how alone she'd felt, how vulnerable. She hadn't anticipated how much she'd grown to rely on working for people she respected, on a support system she knew would hold her, but especially on a dependable squad. And she'd thought that it was funny how dying could lose a person friends.

Kasumi had helped. When Beth had flown the _Normandy_ to Anderson right off, tried to make her first escape, she'd taken the opportunity to recruit the thief. It was true that, with Massani and unlike the rest of the people they'd be recruiting, Kasumi was a merc, hired by Cerberus if not formally in their employ. But unlike Massani, Shepard had gotten the sense with Kasumi right from the beginning that she'd only hired out _because_ Cerberus had been looking for someone to assist Commander Shepard—for the perks and not the money, so to speak. She'd taken advantage of that and hopped right over to the Boltzmann system to help Kasumi with her favor, and wound up with at least _one_ crew mate she could really trust, someone that was on _her_ team and not on Cerberus's. But she'd known that Kasumi was a hacker and infiltrator, a stealth op, not a heavy hitter, and that she'd be of limited use fighting a war with the Collectors or with Cerberus, on that inevitable day when the Illusive Man asked her to do something and she had to say, "I can't do that." So they'd flown to Omega.

Massani had been waiting for them at the dock, but Shepard had had a _bad_ feeling about him then, and nothing had changed since. To start with, he was definitely a merc only on board for the credits, and when she'd looked into his dossier she'd seen that he wasn't picky about who he hired out to or what he was paid to do. But it was more than that. Massani almost reminded Shepard of Nash, and on the whole she kind of felt she'd rather point her gun _at_ him than have _his_ gun at her back. Oh, she knew he'd be an asset for the mission against the Collectors, but she didn't like him, or trust him one centimeter further.

That was why she'd been so relieved when _Archangel_ had turned out to be _Garrus_. Shepard snorted. God, she'd been so stupid. It'd been like shooting up with the most ecstatic stimulant she could think of, seeing him again. She'd almost lost it again there and _hugged_ him, or done something else moronic. She remembered thinking that nothing could take them down, like the dozens of mercs he'd pissed off had become utterly insignificant and all the chains binding her to Cerberus had just melted away. In that one, shining moment, defeating the Collectors and the Reapers had even seemed manageable.

Then that moment ended. She'd got sloppy. The Blue Suns numbers had been thinning. She'd been high on victory, sure they were about to make a break for it, and she'd forgotten she hadn't blown up the damn gunship, just stopped Cathka from finishing repairs. She'd left Garrus alone, just for a moment, and strung out on stims, exhausted as he'd been, his reactions had been too slow. She'd taken down Tarak and the gunship with her grenade launcher in another five seconds, but it'd already been too late. It'd been like she'd found her right arm again, only for it to be blown off by a rocket.

How the hell had she let Garrus so close? How the hell had she let him get shot? Why the hell couldn't she just go into the med bay and see him now?

Shepard knew why. The loss of control she'd experienced in Garrus's base on Omega was the same loss of control she'd experienced after Akuze. It was _dangerous_ , letting other people get so close. They pulled her along with them, way outside her comfort zone, and then they failed, leaving her alone, abandoned, raw, naked, and defenseless in places she'd never meant to go.

It was a perspective she apparently shared with Miranda Lawson, Shepard reflected, thinking back to the recording she'd heard in Kasumi's quarters earlier. It was like the galaxy had tilted on its axis a little, realizing just how terrified Lawson was of her project. Miranda had always seemed so unflappable, so cold and in charge. But it seemed that Miranda respected Shepard's abilities so much that they made Ms. Genetically Perfect herself feel inferior and out of control. Miranda thought Shepard could convince her to go places and do things she wouldn't normally, and it had her terrified.

The thing was, though, that if that was Miranda's honest self-evaluation to someone she trusted, Shepard was almost positive that she wasn't nearly as powerless as it seemed. Power was all about confidence, and Miranda had more confidence in Beth than she had in herself. That might indicate that however reluctant Miranda was now, Shepard would be able to talk her around eventually.

Beth knew she shouldn't know that, though. Miranda's fear was something Shepard should never have heard. Still, the familiarity of that fear had made her almost sick to her stomach in the portside observatory. Shepard was all too familiar with Miranda's surprising insecurities, and it turned the woman she'd previously seen as hostile at best into someone she felt she understood, someone with whom she almost had to sympathize.

"Crap," Shepard muttered, because of course if Miranda didn't have to be her enemy, she was going to have to try to make her an ally. In order to make Miranda an ally, she was going to have to ask the woman to trust her, to overcome her fear of losing control, let go, and follow.

There was only one problem with that: Shepard had always _hated_ hypocrites.

"Commander?" The gentle voice broke into Shepard's black musings, and Shepard jumped. She turned her head, and saw that Doctor Chakwas had come out of the med bay. She noticed crew members around her eating, a line at Rupert's station, and realized she'd been in a blue funk long enough that early suppertime had become suppertime proper.

Shepard greeted the doc with her old nickname. "Oh. Hi, Mom."

"How long have you been out here?" the doctor asked.

"I don't know. A couple hours, maybe?"

Karin's expression was understanding, but nevertheless there was a steel in it too. "You can't avoid him forever," she said. "It's always hard to see our friends wounded, but you'll have to see him sooner or later. Maybe it's better if you get it over with now."

Shepard stood. "You know, I was just thinking that," she said. "Why don't you lead the way?" Still a bit of a coward's move, Shepard thought, asking Chakwas to go with her, especially when the doctor had been in there all day and had been going to get her supper, but Karin didn't object and walked beside her back to the med bay.

Shepard braced herself going in, but the med bay looked just the same. Bright, clean, with a faint smell of antiseptic. The only difference was the turian in the infirmary bed in the corner.

"He's sleeping now," the doctor told her. "I finished his surgeries this morning, as you know, and he took the stitches and the cybernetics well. I've cleared him for light duty in the morning, but I want him on painkillers and sleeping in here for the next week so I can keep an eye on his progress. It goes without saying that he should stay on the _Normandy_ for a while—no groundside missions, no combat."

"If he stays," Shepard murmured. "He may not. Things were kind of crazy back at the base. I didn't exactly get the chance to brief him and offer him a formal contract of employment. Did you know he had all the major merc groups on Omega gunning for him? There were dozens of them around his base when we got there. They'd had him alone and surrounded for days, and he still had 'em all almost pissing their pants."

"I'm not surprised," Chakwas replied. "Our Garrus is a fighter through and through. We wondered what had happened to him, you know," she added, glancing at Shepard. "For a while, after you . . . you know, we all tried to keep in contact. Garrus was one of the easiest to reach. Because he was on the Citadel, and because of his role in helping you stop Saren, he was fairly high-profile. So when he quit, like Joker, left C-Sec and the prospect of Spectre training and just vanished—well. I guess we all handled our grief in different ways."

Shepard started, stung. "You think it was grief?" she demanded, "Are you saying Jeff leaving the Alliance, Garrus starting up some suicidal vigilante gig on Omega—it was _me_?!"

Karin tried to backtrack. "No one's blaming you, Shepard—"

Shepard wasn't having it. "You are, though. You're saying that if it wasn't for me, none of this would've happened!"

Shepard had forgotten to keep her voice down, and Garrus grunted and shifted. When he did he cried out more sharply, pained, but didn't wake. Karin hushed her frantically, but Beth had already quieted, flooded with remorse. The two of them waited in silence for a full minute, and when Garrus still didn't wake, Karin continued in a whisper.

"Commander, what all of your friends did in response to your death is ultimately their responsibility. Garrus, Jeff . . . me. But you can hardly have thought that there would be no reaction at all. We cared about you. For you to die like that . . ." she trailed off.

Beth Shepard looked down at Garrus. She remembered how she'd felt seeing him lying on the ground, and now she imagined Jeff watching _her_ , helpless, as that cruiser blasted her away from the escape pod and the wreckage of the _Normandy_. It was a weird feeling, looking at her death as something that had happened to others, not something that had happened to her. "It's not like I went on sabbatical, is it?" she asked the doctor. "When I died it changed things, didn't it? It changed all of you. And you aren't just going to change back now that I'm back."

The doctor smiled at her, a bitter little, rueful smile. "Welcome back to your life," she said. She wrapped her arm around Beth's shoulders then, and squeezed. Beth leaned into the halfway hug and stood there, accepting the hollow comfort the doctor offered, offering her own comfort in the assurance that though she had died, she was back now, as alive as Garrus on the infirmary cot.

The two women watched Garrus together. Always in the past he'd seemed so tall, so strong, so solidly there to Shepard, but out of armor, clad in his black underarmor, with a large white bandage covering almost half his ruined face, he looked smaller than usual. Young, too. God, it boggled the mind, Shepard thought, but they were _young_ still. Too young to be so far from innocent. Shepard didn't even remember what innocent was.

"I'm going to get some supper," Chakwas told her. "Do you want anything?"

"No," Beth said, for now she was in the med bay at last she was reluctant to leave. "If it's okay, I'll just stay here."

"I think he'd like that."

Shepard snorted. "Might confuse him if he wakes. Could think he died back in that base after all. He was pretty out of it when everything was happening." She frowned. "At least, I think he was."

She heard the smile in Chakwas's voice. "I have every confidence you can work out a way to explain things to him if he wakes up in the ten minutes it will take me to eat my meal, Commander."

Shepard heard the door whish open and closed behind her, but she was content to sit at Karin's station beside the cot and wait, and wonder. No, dying wasn't like going on sabbatical at all. Jeff and Karin hadn't joined Cerberus on a whim—Jeff had been grounded by the Alliance first, which meant he'd probably been suffering from some pretty severe psychological trauma after her death. Dr. Chakwas loved the Alliance, and she'd hated Cerberus as much as anyone on the crew back when they'd been chasing down Saren. Yet she'd left the Alliance to join Cerberus at the drop of a hat when they'd promised her she could work with Jeff and Beth again. Beth had seen the changes grief had made in Anderson, too, when they'd met on the Citadel—it'd been in the way he'd pressed her hand when they'd shook, the way he'd stood up for her against the Council in a way she got the feeling he didn't do often these days—all the evidence was he'd mentally checked out of his job on the Council a long time ago and let that rat bastard Udina do most of the work. It'd been in the way he'd warned her to be careful when she'd left him.

Garrus, though—Garrus was the surprise. She'd worried about him at times, before. She'd known about his reputation at C-Sec, how he didn't care _how_ the bad guy got his, so long as he did. But she never would have dreamed charging into Archangel's base on Omega that she'd find _Garrus_ there. She never would have thought he'd turn vigilante, never would have thought he'd go as far as he had. Everything she'd heard about Archangel—Garrus had been running as much of a suicide mission on Omega as she was running here, or more of one.

"How pissed _were_ you, Vakarian?" Beth murmured to her sleeping companion.

She sighed, remembering all the body bags in his base. She'd seen ten of them, laid out there on the floor. They'd fought around them. The words of the recruiter in Afterlife echoed in her mind. _He had a whole team, but we killed them. Now he's just one guy._

And then when she'd asked him how he'd let himself get trapped in the base, Garrus had told her _My feelings got in the way of my better judgment._ If her death and the fallout afterward had somehow changed Garrus into Archangel, what would the deaths of the team he'd spent the last two years alongside change him into now?

It didn't matter, Shepard decided, setting her jaw. She wasn't going to be trapped in a cage of distrust, held back from moving forward at all because she was so afraid of being drawn after someone she might lose. Nor was she ready to surrender to Cerberus's dictate, leave Miranda and Jacob and the whole innocent crew they'd hired especially to pacify and/or misdirect her to the Illusive Man's dubious program. No. She was going to fight the Collectors and take on the Reapers _her_ way. This was _her_ ship, _her_ mission, but to defeat the Collectors and break herself and all the crew away from Cerberus influence she needed her friends, _especially_ Garrus Vakarian. Whatever he'd done, however he'd changed, there was no way that could be any different.

Beth reached out and gripped Garrus's forearm. "Shepard and Vakarian, cruising the galaxy for trouble," she whispered. "Remember? It didn't last nearly long enough before. Well. We've got a second chance now, you and me. What do you think about that?"

When Doctor Chakwas came back from her supper break five minutes later she found Beth still there, slumped over Garrus' cot in her chair, really asleep for the first time since Vakarian had been wounded three days prior. The commander was holding Garrus's wrist in a death grip, and in his sleep, Vakarian's hand had closed around her wrist, too, so that somehow, despite the incongruous numbers of fingers, they were holding hands.


	3. On Horizon

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **IX: "Horizon: Perspective."**

* * *

III

On Horizon

Shepard's fist hit the punching bag with another satisfying smack, and another wispy, blonde curl fell out of her messy bun and into her face. A bead of sweat dripped off it into her eyes. It stung, but Shepard ignored it. She shut out everything, everything but the working muscle groups. She'd been at this for hours, but she still wasn't aching, because of Cerberus's stupid cybernetics. The scars were starting to heal, but Beth still felt like a freaking Frankenstein's monster. She could fight for hours without breaking down, but she couldn't get piss-drunk. Not for more than a few minutes, anyway. Then her body's chemistry adjusted automatically, and she was fine. Shepard kicked out again and felt her foot connect. Once upon a time by this point she would have been bone-tired and too sore to move. She wanted that again so badly it hurt.

Shepard fell face-first to the floor and caught herself on her hands. She did five pushups. Ten. Fifty. So many she lost count, and then she was up and at the punching bag again. Her knuckles were red, but she knew they should be blue and green, swollen, split and bleeding from all the abuse.

"Shepard."

A voice. Shepard ignored it.

"Shepard!"

"What?" Beth snapped.

"You've been down here for hours. You haven't eaten all day. You're scaring everyone down here in engineering. Grunt says you're in a blood rage. Jack's worried. Jack. Says you've lost your shit. I'm starting to believe her."

"Well, screw them! And screw you, too! Just—"

"Shepard."

Beth swung at the punching bag again, missed, and stalked off. She slid down against the wall by the shuttle. One, two, three seconds, and sure enough, the tears choked up her throat and burned her eyes. Beth buried her head in her hands and bit her tongue so hard the blood came, metallic in her mouth, an old habit from childhood she hadn't needed for years, but now it was the only thing keeping her from sobbing.

She pushed her hair back from her face, and glared up at Garrus, who was still standing there being useless. "Damn you, Vakarian! Damn you!" Her voice was a broken string. "I was handling it. I was fine. Why'd they go to you, huh? Why'd you have to come? Don't answer that. You always pull this shit, and it doesn't suit you. I don't need you. I'm fine. I'm fine."

"If you're fine, that's the best imitation of messed up I've ever seen. Shepard. Talk to me."

Shepard scrubbed at her face with her hands and groaned. "Garrus, they took half that colony," she mumbled from behind her hands. "We were there, and they took half that colony. We were supposed to stop it. We're supposed to be better. I'm supposed to be better. I'm Commander Fucking Shepard. Some job of it I did." She shook her head. "Not one more. You hear me? Not one more."

Beside her, Garrus chuffed softly as he sat next to her, just like old times against the Mako. "We were late to the scene, Shepard. You can't blame yourself for that. Next time we'll get them. We're getting ready, and when we have all we need, we'll take those bastards down."

Beth massaged her temples. "We better. They're pissing me off. You know why they picked Horizon, don't you? You know why they went there."

Garrus nodded. "Kaidan. The Collectors are working for the Reapers, Shepard. I think you've pissed the Reapers off, too, if it makes you feel any better."

Beth scoffed. "Yeah. Not much. All those people, Garrus!"

"And Kaidan?" Garrus prompted.

Not for the first time, Beth wished that Garrus was just a little stupider. She shook her head. "Mind your own damn business." Garrus raised his hands, and started to rise. Shepard grimaced and caved. Of course she didn't really want him to go. "I shouldn't blame him," she said. "If it had been him dying, staying dead two years, then coming back Cerberus and wanting to be friends again . . ." she laughed, really half hysterical. "Forget telling him where to stick it, I might've shot him. I know what Cerberus is. I know what this looks like. He has no reason to believe this is on the level, no reason to trust me. The Alliance deserves his loyalty—"

"—So do you," Garrus broke in.

His ferocity surprised her into looking up. "Do I? I don't even know what I am. I don't know what all Cerberus has done to me, but I'm not the person I was two years ago. I don't even know if I qualify as human anymore, all the stuff they put in me. For all I know I'm something like EDI." She winced. "No. That wasn't fair. I actually like the damned AI. It's not her fault. She tries so hard, too. I'm something like . . . like those husks.

"Shepard. Shut up. You're you. Maybe with a little extra. But you're you. Stubborn as hell, and just a _little_ crazy." Garrus's mandibles flared in a turian smile. "I'm pretty sure husks don't spend time worrying about their humanity . . . or lack thereof, I guess. And I don't think our resident baby krogan and psychopath would waste time worrying about a husk. More likely just blow it up."

Shepard had to smile at that. It was true enough.

"Anyway, I think I could tell if you weren't you. You see some strange things on Omega."

Shepard hissed in a sharp breath. It was like Garrus had reached right into her ribcage and squeezed. She dropped her gaze and bit her tongue again. The best part was, it wasn't just what she wanted to hear. Garrus didn't do that. Ever.

After another moment, she felt she could speak. "About Kaidan," she admitted. "It's stupid, but I do blame him. I understand why things went down the way they did. I do. I would've done the same thing. Probably wouldn't have been as nice about it. But I blame him anyway. And it _hurts_ , and _God_ , we could've used him." She closed her eyes tight and wrapped her arms around her torso.

"Kaidan's an idiot," Garrus told her. Then he dropped his eyes. "But he was pretty messed up when you died. I guess we all handled it differently."

Beth snorted. "Yeah. You left C-Sec, went to Omega, and started shooting people."

"Well, we all saw how well that turned out."

Beth immediately felt remorseful. She turned to Garrus. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay."

"No. You've been through enough. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything. And it's over now, anyway. It's done."

"Not until I kill Sidonis. I'm close, Shepard. And when the time comes . . ."

There was an edge to Garrus's tone Beth didn't like. The lust for revenge, the bloodthirst: it wasn't the Garrus she knew. She shifted, but couldn't figure out how to voice her worries. "We'll handle it." She very carefully avoided saying how. Beth didn't know what she'd do when Garrus finally tracked his traitor down. But she'd be damned if she'd watch her friend dive right back into the dark now she'd found him and fished him out of it.

Garrus was still thinking about her implicit criticism. "It played out exactly like you'd said, " he muttered. "The politics, the smear campaign. But you were dead, and when they started tearing down all we'd seen, all you'd said, I couldn't—I had to do something. I thought on Omega I might make a difference. But I didn't even make a dent in the place."

Shepard made a feeble effort to fix it. "You made yourself a name," she offered. "Pissed a hell of a lot of people off. You've got talent, Vakarian. And you took an awful lot of bad off that station."

"But I didn't put a lot of good back in its place," Garrus answered, paraphrasing something Shepard had told him a couple of times. He couldn't look at her. "And I lost what good I found."

Shepard couldn't think what to say to him, but the silence was an answer in itself. Beside her, Garrus seemed to collapse into himself a little, and Shepard sighed. In the absence of just the right words, she leaned against him, and even though she probably still smelled sweaty and awful, he didn't push her away. "Garrus, if you were somebody else I could lie to you," she told him. "Make you feel better about your mistakes, or feel like I have all the answers."

"I think I know you a little too well to think _that_ ," Garrus said. She felt his voice rumbling in his chest even through his hard suit.

Shepard forced a laugh. "Yeah, you wouldn't fall for it if I tried, and I respect you too much anyway. I—you made mistakes. And I know it hurts like hell. But—I—shit, I don't know. I'm sorry, I guess. But we're okay. You know that, right? I'm just glad you didn't get yourself killed, too."

"I gave it my best shot," Garrus joked.

Beth elbowed him, hard, and he doubled over with a soft _oof_. "Don't even!" She heard him laugh then, and his arm came around her shoulder to hold her, half sprawled against his torso. The physical closeness was something that had just sort of happened between them, ever since she'd picked him up on Omega. It had never been part of their relationship when she'd known him before, but now it was like they both needed to reach out from time to time and feel the other was still around, still there.

They sat there for a moment, and then Garrus looked down at her. "What was all that earlier? Some shit I always pull that doesn't suit me?"

Beth sat up and moved away from Garrus. She reflected she probably should leave Garrus shipside the next few missions. She just hated doing without his support groundside. He was the only squad member she had that reliably saw everything she did on a battlefield, and sometimes even things she missed. She never had to worry about him, didn't even have to bother with orders very often. But she was starting to get a little too comfortable, a little too careless. Some space and time couldn't hurt.

"Nothing," she said. "Just routine word-vomit."

"What a vivid metaphor," Garrus said drily. "But I thought you said you didn't lie to me."

Shepard shifted. "It was nothing!" she insisted. "It's just, you know—you always try to pull the white-hat hero shtick whenever I just need ten minutes to sort things out. It's annoying! The whole turian rebel thing works much better for you, anyway, and it doesn't force me to play damsel in distress!"

Garrus laughed, incredulous. "Damsel in distress? No one in their right mind would ever confuse you with a damsel in distress. But nobody can be a hero all of the time. Sometimes it's okay to borrow strength from your unit. It won't kill you."

"You'd be surprised," Shepard muttered, remembering a severed arm in the mud of Akuze, Jeff's face as she'd drifted away over Alchera, Garrus on the floor of his base on Omega. "Just next time, leave me alone, okay?"

"Shepard. I've got your damn six," Garrus said. His tone brooked no argument. "It's one thing I can do right. Even if it means sometimes I'm keeping you from shooting yourself down."

Beth gave up. She pushed him, a little harder than was strictly playful, but not angrily. "You do a lot of things right, Vakarian," she growled. "More than most people." She decided to change the subject. "The Illusive Man's cleared Tali for recruitment."

"Tali? It'll be good to have her back on the _Normandy_. Just like old times."

"If she comes," Shepard qualified. "I ran into her on Freedom's Progress. The quarians have problems with Cerberus. Just like everybody. And she was busy at the time, but she still trusts me." She frowned. "I think. And at least she knows what we're up against. But I didn't think Cerberus would let me pick up any of the old crew."

"And who am I, then? Nobody?" Garrus joked.

Shepard laughed. "You don't even know, do you? You were a hell-outta-nowhere accident, _Archangel_. I went to recruit the vigilante. Just got damn lucky _he_ turned out to be _you_. God, Miranda was pissed! She was sure you and me were going to team up to take all of Cerberus out straight out the gate."

Garrus looked intrigued. "We could do it, too. Might be something to add to our to-do list. If we survive, that is."

" _If_ we survive. Think Tali will help?"

"It'd be a service to the galaxy. But even if Tali isn't down for some Cerberus destruction, Jack will _definitely_ help."

Shepard could see it in her mind's eye, and she chuckled, darkly amused. "Help? We'd be sitting back watching the show."

Garrus caught her eye. "Seriously, though, Shepard. Do you want to go after them?"

Shepard sighed. "I don't know. I can't imagine getting along with Cerberus for long. The shit we saw on the _SR-1_? I think it's only a matter of time before Cerberus gives me an order I won't be able to follow, and then we may have to deal with them, before they deal with us."

"You know, turians follow bad orders," Garrus remarked. "Well. Good turians do. I've never been what you could call a good turian, though. You're different, though."

"No, not really," Shepard said. "I mutinied against the Council to go to Ilos, remember? Mostly I've been fortunate enough to have been given good orders that make sense. But when I'm not? I'll do the right thing. Cerberus aren't often into the right thing. But on the other hand?"

Garrus followed her at once. "The Reapers."

Shepard nodded. "The Collectors, as bad as they are, aren't the real threat. If we survive this, and Cerberus is willing to help me fight the Reapers? I don't know. They're the only ones in the galaxy that seem to be taking the Reapers seriously. I may have to take what I can get, at least to start."

"But first we have to take care of the Collectors. Through the Omega-4 relay, that no one's ever survived." Garrus's sarcasm was without bitterness. Just mentioning the impossibility of their mission, ready to take it on nevertheless.

"Straight into hell," Shepard confirmed, rolling her shoulders back. "But Garrus, we have to be better. Smarter. Faster. It's a suicide run, but it damn well better not be pointless."

"Whatever happens, I'm with you," Garrus promised.

"On my damn six, whether I like it or not," Shepard said.

"You got it."

Groaning, Shepard stood. She held out her hand to pull Garrus to his feet, too. "I better go tell Jack and Grunt the commander's not going to explode any time soon."

"Shame. They'd enjoy the fireworks."

"Sweet they were worried," Shepard remarked.

"I should probably go check the Thanix again," Garrus said.

"See you later."

"You know where to find me if you need anything."

Garrus strode off, and Shepard waited until he'd passed out of earshot before addressing the ceiling. "Miranda, if you're listening, fuck off. If you didn't know we had problems with your organization you're a lot stupider than I thought."

"Operative Lawson has not been listening to the feed from the shuttle bay, Commander Shepard," EDI said. "She switched off her speaker seventeen minutes ago, and I believe she is working on the Horizon report."

Beth checked her omni-tool. Seventeen minutes ago would have been very soon after she'd started speaking to Garrus. It was a respect for her privacy she wouldn't have expected from Miranda. Something to consider. She nodded once. "Right. Okay. Then, EDI? Scrub the last seventeen minutes."

"Done, Commander."

* * *

 **A/N: People following both Disaster Zone and _Sometimes Grace_ -this is where their different philosophies start to catch up with us. Disaster Zoneis a character story. It's more concerned with change over time than the plot, which means it looks in at windows during the Mass Effect trilogy (and before and after) and leaves the rest alone. It's a lot shorter and moves along a lot faster than my novelization. **

**I don't want to stop making regular updates to DZ just so people also following _Sometimes Grace_ don't get spoiled. But I'm beginning to wonder if I should. If I could get some input here, it'd help. The people that read DZ are reading _Sometimes Grace_ , and _Sometimes Grace_ has more readers that could use DZ to jump ahead in the story. I'm the kind of person that doesn't mind spoilers or jumping around in a story, but I know other people aren't like that. Should I just have all of _Resurrection_ available for readers to spoil themselves, or should I post updates to _Resurrection_ as they fit in with _Sometimes Grace_? Would it flow better that way for people reading both stories? **

**This isn't too far ahead of the _Sometimes Grace_ storyline, just a few chapters. I'm going to appeal to both your impatience and your sense of story here. What's the best tack for me to take? **

**Best,**

 **LMSharp**


	4. Something Better

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Sometime during** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XXIII, "A Question of Loyalty: Fleet."**

* * *

IV

Something Better

The drive core hummed, drowning out the sounds of the rest of engineering. Here Cerberus had relaxed the luxury they'd lavished the rest of the _SR-2_ with for wickedly efficient utility, but the metal floor was cold and hard beneath Beth Shepard, and so was the railing. Her shoulder was crammed into the corner, and she could feel her left leg going to sleep. Shepard was extremely uncomfortable, but still she didn't move.

Shepard stared into the pulsing, bright, blue light of the drive core helplessly, rubbing Tali's back absently. The quarian had fallen asleep a few minutes before, exhausted with grief and stress. Shepard could hear Tali's deeper breathing through the air filters in her suit, still ragged from the tears.

She'd lost her father earlier. She'd almost lost her entire people.

Beth had known she'd find Tali there that night, in the little alcove that separated the drive core from the rest of engineering. The ship was filling up more and more these days. This was one of the only places onboard a person could break down in peace without access to the captain's cabin or fielding awkward questions from nearby crew. Tali had been through enough today that she'd simply had to break down. Daniels and Donnelly couldn't see or hear anything that went on back here. So after a while, Shepard had come looking for Tali here.

Amazing how screwed up and needy such a crack team could be. The sad part is the ones that counted on her the most, the ones that needed her most, didn't even know what a sorry excuse she was for any kind of anchor, because they'd never known what real family looked like, either. A broken young woman covered in physical and emotional scars, biotically super-powered with a rap sheet kilometers long? A weeks-old krogan, a baby for all he was a biologically engineered weapon of mass destruction, ignorant of everything except what the tank had taught him of killing? And Tali. She'd rhapsodized about the virtues of her people, so close they were all like family, but that family used and manipulated her without a second thought. None of them had any more idea what _real_ family was than Beth Shepard did, but they looked to her anyway. The idiots were doomed. Beth Shepard was about as prepared to be a parent as Anderson was to be a politician.

Jack never said anything out loud, and Beth was still unclear on what exactly "clan" meant to a tankbred krogan anyway, especially since Grunt still talked about pitting his new clan—whenever he got them—against her one day, but it had been abundantly clear aboard the _Raaya_ today that legally and emotionally, Shepard was just as responsible for Tali as she'd always feared. The quarians considered her Tali's advocate, charged with her safety and her representative in times of trouble. But Tali had implied she considered Shepard much more than merely her captain.

" _I got better, Shepard. I got you."_

Oh, God.

It wasn't like Tali did have anything better, though, Beth thought. Her beloved people had sent her off alone into a hostile galaxy when she'd been little older than the equivalent of a first-year human college student, or a first-year private in the Alliance. At least human universities and the Alliance had support systems available for their kids. It had been brutally apparent from the moment Beth had met Tali, wounded and surrounded by thugs in the back streets of the Citadel Wards, that whatever her "classes" and "gifts" had given her, she had been completely unprepared for her Pilgrimage. Shepard had met three quarian kids since that had shown her that her friend had hardly been the exception to the problem. One robbed and stranded on Omega, one very close to going to prison for a crime she didn't commit on the Citadel, another reduced to selling herself into slavery on Illium. All near starving and a long, long way from finding anything of value that would enable them to return home. Shepard had done what she could for them. But for Tali, the Pilgrimage had just been the beginning.

Tali hadn't been exaggerating her political importance back in the day. If anything, she hadn't played up enough how she was apparently an avatar of the quarian people. Shepard had been so angry, though, when she'd seen. The quarian admiralty had used Tali as a pawn in their political games. Shaala'Raan and Han'Gerrel professed to care about Tali. They didn't give a damn. The entire board had been willing to run Tali into the dirt in pursuit of their various political agendas, and even the ones that wanted to save her hadn't lifted a finger to spare her feelings in doing so, hadn't wanted to save her from disgrace and exile because they actually loved her. The whole thing had left a bad taste in Beth's mouth, and even if Tali hadn't been on the verge of exile her entire life, she'd had to deal with those people for years.

And her father! Rael'Zorah had been an absolute moron. Taking shortcuts like he had to start a stupid, dangerous war to bridge the gap between himself and his daughter. If Tali's father had known her at all he'd have realized that all Tali really wanted was his time.

Granted, things now could be a hell of a lot worse. If Shepard had been unable to make the admirals see what jackasses they were being, see that they weren't actually trying Tali at all, the whole thing might have blown up. If the admiralty hadn't come around, Shepard wouldn't have been able to pull off what she had. Tali might have still been exonerated. They'd found the proof that Tali was innocent of the charges laid against her. But if Shepard had been forced to actually submit it, all the quarians would know what an idiot Rael'Zorah had actually been. On top of his death and the stress of being tried for treason in the first place, Shepard didn't know how Tali would have coped. It was just as well things had worked out the way they had.

The admiralty board had cleared Tali out of guilt and embarrassment, plain and simple. No one had been looking out for Tali on the _Raaya_ today, any more than anyone had been looking out for her two years ago when she'd come into possession of information that had had her on the run from both Saren and the Shadow Broker. Tali didn't have any real family, anyone really looking out for her. There _wasn't_ anyone "better" for her than Beth. It was almost as hilarious as it was terrifying.

Shepard actually laughed aloud. The drive core muffled the harsh, manic bark almost at once, but Tali was still leaning against Beth, and she stirred.

"Shepard?" she said sleepily, confused. "Did I—did I fall asleep? I'm sorry. Why didn't you wake me? How long have we been here?"

Shepard shook her head. "It's only been a few minutes," she answered. Had it? She wasn't sure. "It's fine, Tali. I know you must be exhausted."

"I am," Tali agreed. "But that's no reason to sleep on the floor. On my commanding officer. Thanks, Shepard. This . . . it really means a lot, that you came to find me like this."

Shepard helped Tali sit up. "Yeah," she said. She drew her legs up to her chest. The drive core thrummed. Her heart beat in time with it.

"Shepard? Are _you_ alright?" Tali asked.

"No," Beth admitted. " _Vas Normandy_ , Tali. I joked about it before. But really, are you going to keep it?"

Tali thought about it for a moment. "I think I will. Whatever the admiralty board meant by calling me _vas Normandy_ , Shepard, I'm proud to be on your crew. The _Normandy_ has been a true home to me."

Shepard pressed her lips together. She leaned back with her head against the hard wall, closing her eyes. "Tali, I don't know a thing about homes and families," she whispered. "I'm just a soldier. You know that, right?"

A slender, three-fingered hand gripped her arm, and Beth looked into Tali's visor. She wondered about the two luminescent spots behind Tali's purple mask. Did her eyes really glow, or did the suit just light them up for conversational convenience? "What's wrong, Shepard?" Tali asked.

"I don't want to let you down, Tali," Beth told her. "Any of you. I do the best I can for you, and I always will. I think you know that. But just . . . remember what this is, okay? Remember who I am. I'm not your mom or sister or whatever. Your ' _something better_.' Aside from the fact that I can't be, not now, I don't even know how."

Tali laughed, disbelieving. "Don't know how? Shepard, you saved me on my Pilgrimage. Today on the _Raaya_ , you kept me from being exiled and saved my father's memory among my people. And after that, you found me here and let me cry all over you. What else could anyone possibly want?"

"Right. I _saved_ you," Shepard scoffed. "I 'saved' you from some thugs in an alley and then proceeded to drag you through hell and about fifty thousand geth guns. Straight into a war. Now I'm doing it again." Beth took Tali's hand, and gently removed it from her arm. "I'm a _military commander_ , Tali, and you're my crew. This isn't the flotilla. We're on a mission that could kill us all if I screw anything up." She looked down at her feet. "And I'm not the big damn hero everyone seems to think I am, either. They call me the savior of the Citadel, but thousands died last time. We got damn lucky, and I don't know if we can pull a miracle out of our asses again. Even if we do, who the hell knows what we'll find? You know the Collectors aren't the worst of it."

Tali was quiet a moment. "I know we might die," she admitted at last. "But the Collectors—the Reapers—won't stop with humans. They're a threat to everyone in the galaxy. And I can't let you and Garrus deal with Cerberus on your own. You need me. Do you remember how on the _Raaya_ , they said that the captain is responsible for the safety of her crew?"

"I'm not likely to forget."

"It works both ways. In the flotilla, we're like family—"

"Some family!"

Shepard instantly regretted the vehemence and bitterness of her interjection, but Tali kept calm. "We weren't at our best today," she conceded. "But normally, a ship's crew help one another. If the quarian people didn't rely on one another, we would die. The captain is responsible for the lives aboard her ship, yes, but a crew takes care of its captain, too. Everyone pitches in, doing chores, repairs, learning new skills—fighting, if necessary. And the captain has her friends, her family that she can rely on, just like they can always rely on her. I may be _vas Normandy_ , but in the language of my people, so are you. Shepard _vas Normandy_. You belong to this ship, to this crew, as much as I do. And we will take care of you as much as you take care of us."

Beth frowned at her friend. "I don't need anyone to take care of me, Tali."

Tali pushed her lightly, and when she spoke, her voice was gentle. "Yes, you do. You'd be lost without me. It's okay, Shepard. You can admit it."

"No," Beth retorted, feigning petulance, but letting Tali know by the twitch at the corners of her mouth how much she really did appreciate her friend's trust and help. Then she caught Tali's gaze, serious again. "Tali. I'm sorry about your dad. He was an _idiot_ —don't deny it, he _was_ —but I wish we'd been able to save him, or that you'd at least had a chance to say goodbye."

"Me, too." Tali murmured. She looked away and curled up against the wall.

"Come on," Beth said after a moment. "I'll walk you to your bunk." She helped Tali to stand.

"Shepard. It'll be okay. You know that, right?" The words didn't ring with conviction, and Shepard knew Tali was uncertain, too.

"Yeah, I'm still not convinced. But something bad needs killing, and we've got some big freaking guns. We'll do our part for the galaxy, and maybe we'll survive." Beth sighed. "I still feel like a horrible person for taking you down with me. Garrus. Jeff. Chakwas. All the others, too, now. But I'm glad you're with me, too."

"We're your friends. Maybe that will be enough," Tali offered.

"Maybe. I hope so." Shepard walked toward the crew barracks, and thought of Ashley, of the thousands dead on the Citadel in the battle. She thought of the hundreds of thousands the Collectors had already abducted, and the Reapers, waiting in dark space, and didn't say anything else.

* * *

 **LETTERS TO AND FROM AN INFORMATION BROKER, PART ONE**

Time Fix: Somewhere between two or three weeks prior to the chapter.

* * *

 **Liara,**

 **It's been a while! I had no idea you had gone into the information business! I got your contact info from a friend of mine on Illium, Annika D'Leon. Maybe you've heard of her?**

 **Can you believe Shepard's back? And with Cerberus? I ran into her when the Collectors attacked Horizon. She saved half the colony from abduction. Garrus is with her. She wanted to recruit me, but I'm not sure about Cerberus. I saw Shepard get spaced two years ago.**

 **Annika says Shepard is on Illium too now, and that you might have seen her. Whether you have or not, it's be great to hear from you, Liara. It's been too long.**

— **Kaidan**

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _Your information is good. Annika D'Leon is a highly respected information broker. I'm not quite sure how I feel about you patronizing my competition._

 _Shepard is here. Garrus is with her. The two of them have been to visit me on two separate occasions, but of course they're very busy. I assume you know, since you were at Horizon, that Shepard is building a team and gathering intel to stop the Collector abductions completely. I believe she is planning an all-out assault on their home base beyond the Omega-4 relay. And may I assure you, whatever colors the Normandy SR-2 flies, the ship and her crew are solidly under Shepard's command and on her mission, whether Cerberus is aware of this or not. I'm sure you recall the Ilos run? The Commander has not changed. It's been good to see her again._

 _Kaidan, if I may, I am more than willing to offer my services if you want to keep an eye out. I happen to be a very good information broker, and I love my work. If you are in need of information, please, just ask. My fees are very reasonable, and for an old friend I'm sure I can manage a discount._

 _I wish you all the best,_

 _Liara_

* * *

 **[AFTER SOME TIME AND A 75-CREDIT TRANSFER]**

 _Kaidan:_

 _You might be interested to learn that Shepard's operations have been fully sanctioned by the Citadel Council. Soon after her reappearance, she reported to Councilor Anderson on the Citadel, and there was reinstated as a Spectre with the unanimous approval of the Council, provided she restricts her operations to the Terminus systems for the duration of her association with Cerberus._

 _Likewise, the Alliance, although they have not reinstated her officially as of yet have recruited her on occasion for special assignment. I know for certain that Shepard was involved in the retrieval of the remains of the twenty lost crew members from the wreckage of the Normandy SR-1, and she may have received other classified communications from Alliance High Command—on which of course I would have no further information. Nevertheless, we can conclude the Council and the Alliance have reestablished ties with Shepard and have offered her provisional support, though like you, the trend seems to be to maintain distance and keep a close eye on Shepard's association with Cerberus._

 _My Regards,_

 _Liara_

* * *

 **A/N: Wanted to give you something other than the vid trailers or reviews (though those are fun, too). It was always my impression that Kaidan (or his family) had money, and we know he asks a lot of questions. So I like the idea that he used his connection to Liara to check up on Shepard during ME2, maybe both at once to look out for her and to fact check that she hasn't been up to anything as sinister as some people in the Alliance think she has. Liara uses the opportunity to serve as Shepard's PR rep (foreshadowing her penchant for secrecy and operating in the shadow world). She doesn't lie and gives Kaidan the information he wants, but she may not give him all of it and will definitely color the facts in Shepard's favor. Also, hey, gives us an opportunity to check up on these guys.**

 **It seems we're sticking to the original post schedule, so you'll continue getting DZ:R updates every Wednesday until the story's completion, no matter how far it outruns SG, though I'll continue to locate DZ chapters within SG for the convenience of people who might eventually want to read them together.**

 **LMSharp**


	5. Of Maws and Men

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XXVII: "Light-Bringer: Sage."**

* * *

V

Of Maws and Men

Beth kept the smile painted on her face until the shaman and the new Urdnot Grunt had disappeared down the path toward the camp. Only then did she let go of the iron control she'd been exercising over herself for almost an hour and a half. Like she was a marionette and someone had cut all her strings, she collapsed, utterly spent.

She managed to stagger about a meter from the path before the nausea overwhelmed her and she fell to her knees, retching, emptying her stomach on the concrete. The vomit spattered mingled with more than a little bit of blood from where her teeth had torn holes in her tongue and cheek. Shepard convulsed, and her arms nearly gave way as well, leaving her to fall sprawling in the acrid pool of sick and blood, but an armored arm came around her waist and jerked her up and away and to her feet again.

"Hey, hey!"

Shepard tripped with the force of her momentum. The arm tightened around her waist, and armor squealed against armor. When Shepard regained her footing, she found herself chest to chest with Garrus Vakarian, her hands flat on his shoulders. She blinked up at him in dazed confusion, but as soon as Garrus realized she wasn't going to fall again, he dropped his hands from her waist like a hot potato and took three quick steps back.

"Well. I knew it was going to be bad, but I can't say I was expecting _that_ ," he began, but Shepard was far from done.

She grimaced, wiping her mouth with the back of her gauntlet. "Probably a mixture of the concussion and the fact that we just fought a fucking thresher maw on foot!" She was still shaking, beginning to hyperventilate. Now she'd started reacting, she couldn't seem to stop. "I hate those things! I hate them!"

Garrus handed her his canteen, and without thinking, Shepard took it. She screwed the top off, took a sip, swished the water around, and spat. She gave the canteen back to Garrus and began to pace, trying to walk off the shudders. Her fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically.

"Teenage krogan just can't go out to the bar and get drunk with the rest of the galaxy when they come of age. The party's no good at all unless a thresher maw's spewing acid at you."

Shepard heard Garrus's words like they were coming down a long, dark tunnel. Images kept flashing through her mind. Mandibles tearing through tents like paper, the churning, bleeding ground. Evans screaming in the jaws of a maw, Wright crushed against the tank. She could smell acid eating limbs to the bone, corroding even bone until it was black and pitted. Shepard came to a halt and doubled over, hands covering her ears and eyes screwed shut, as if that could shut out the memories.

Hands seized her wrists. "Hey! Stay with me!" The flanged voice, so different from any of the human screams reverberating in Beth's skull, cut through the noise. Beth opened her eyes and focused on Garrus, and her shaking slowed, then stopped. Her breathing began to return to normal. "We're fine now. It's over," Garrus was saying. He saw her eyes open, tracking again. "Damn, Shepard. Was it because we were on the ground this time?"

"I think so," Shepard answered, after she was sure she was breathing normally again, that the panic attack had passed. She hadn't had one like it for years—the sudden onslaught had caught her off guard. "All the times we ran into one of those things before, we were in the Mako. Big fucking gun and tank armor aside, I had a map with topography and life sign readings that told me we might run into a thresher maw. I mean, the shaman told us to be prepared for anything. And Tuchanka—maybe I should have expected it. But I didn't. And when that thing just erupted from the ground like that—it was just like I was back there, all over again."

Garrus released her wrists. "Well. Not quite," he said. "There was just one this time."

"Just one!" Shepard cried. It was really almost funny. "As if that's not enough!"

"I don't think you had a Cain on Akuze, either," Garrus mused. "Unless I've been wildly misinformed."

Shepard smiled weakly. "Did you see it go up?"

"The _Normandy_ probably saw it go up from orbit," Garrus assured her.

Shepard's smile widened, but just for a moment. Then she dropped her gaze and shuddered all over again. "And yet I'm still not sure it's dead enough. They never feel dead enough."

"Trust me: Miranda and all her scientists couldn't resurrect that monster. Not even if Mordin helped. It's over."

Shepard nodded, and stood up straight. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize."

Shepard glanced at him. "And you didn't have to stay behind when Grunt and the shaman left for the celebration. I appreciate it."

Garrus's mandibles twitched. "Because a turian alone in a krogan camp is going to go over so well." His tone was mild, but the observation was so on point Shepard grimaced.

"Mordin was smart to hitch the shuttle back to the _Normandy_ when he did. Might've been better to keep you off the ground team altogether for the last couple days, now you mention it. Tuchanka's not much safer than a quarantine zone for a plague that kills aliens."

By common unspoken consent, the two of them had begun walking back toward the Urdnot camp. "Would've gone there with you, too," Garrus remarked. "You took off without me that time."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You'd just taken a rocket to the face, and there were four other humans on the team. Idiot. We didn't know Mordin had developed a cure. You know what your problem is, Vakarian? You're spoiled."

Garrus laughed. "Admit it: part of you has just loved dragging a turian and a salarian around on Tuchanka and making the krogan like it."

Shepard tried to keep a straight face, and Garrus brandished a triumphant talon at her, victorious both in his argument and in his efforts to distract her. "A big part," Shepard admitted. "The krogan need to broaden their minds. It's good for them!" She snorted a laugh, giving up. "Or maybe you're right, and I'm just an obnoxious asshole."

Garrus chuckled. "I'd say about 30 percent social reformer, 70 percent obnoxious asshole," he decided.

"Aww, come on! You're not going to give me any more credit than that?" Shepard pleaded.

Garrus's eyes gleamed. "You _headbutted_ Uvenk. Tell me you didn't do it just to see the look on his face. I dare you."

Shepard rubbed her temples, and rolled her neck, trying to dispel the lingering pain. "Not my smartest move," she conceded. "Cerberus upgrades or not, humans aren't designed to headbutt krogan."

"No kidding. Concussion, you said?"

"Pretty sure," Shepard confirmed, though she kept her voice light, unconcerned. "Might've wrenched my spine, too." She massaged her neck with her fingers. She'd almost definitely wrenched her spine, she thought to herself, and maybe even sustained a hairline fracture to a vertebra back there, though if she'd injured her spinal cord she knew she'd be a lot worse off and certainly wouldn't have been able to fight. But there was no point telling Garrus this.

His mandibles were tight, though, as he looked at her through his visor, and Shepard suspected he'd started a heat scan to check her for internal bleeding and bruising. He hummed. "You were moving pretty well in the fight back there," he said, "But I've seen you do that with two knife wounds and a bullet in you, when you need to lead the team."

"That business on Feros? You're exaggerating. C'mon, Garrus. How many times are we going to get the chance to attend a real krogan party?"

Garrus eyed her. "Do we _want_ to?"

Shepard grimaced. "Probably not, but Grunt will want his _krannt_ there. And I have a few words to say to Wrex, too."

"I'll bet you do."

* * *

Shepard found Wrex a little ways away from all the rest of the hullaballoo. He was roasting some sort of meat on a spit over a campfire. Probably varren or pyjak, Shepard thought. He was also alone. Shepard sighed, reflecting with a little regret that there might have been another reason Wrex had greeted her with so much enthusiasm yesterday morning. He was clan Urdnot's Patriarch, in the true sense of the word, and the rest of them could not be brothers unless the patriarch kept himself at a little distance.

She caught his gaze, and he stood. Shepard walked up to Wrex, squared off, and punched him right in the jaw. She broke off, swearing, shaking her hand to dispel the pain. "Shit! Shit! Dammit! You hardheaded son of a varren!"

Wrex rubbed his jaw, laughing. "Guess I deserved that," he said. "Maw take you by surprise?"

"You could say that. You could have told me."

"You handled it well. Krogan will be talking about this for generations. Urdnot Grunt, a human, and a _turian_ , on foot, brought down a thresher maw at the Rite. You can't help making trouble, Shepard."

"I prefer _not_ to make trouble with groundshaking monsters that spit _acid_ ," Shepard retorted. " _Warn_ me next time!"

Wrex laughed. "Will do. But you're a long way from Akuze. Look around." He gestured out across the camp, at Grunt and the krogan out by the guns. Garrus was with them. He had relaxed to the point that he was helping the Urdnot to optimize their artillery, talking and gesticulating animatedly with his omni-tool. His demonstration seemed to be going over pretty well. A laugh and a cheer rose up from the group as Shepard watched. Krogan might have a grudge against turians, but they always enjoyed learning better ways to kill things. "You're alive. Your team's alive. Not a scratch on you." He looked down at her hand and laughed again. "For the most part. You've grown since Akuze, Shepard. Now you know. You're welcome."

"If you're expecting me to thank you you'll be waiting a long time, Wrex," Shepard informed the krogan chief, but she sat down at his fire anyway. Truth was, he was right. She'd handled the maw. She'd kept her head and dealt with Uvenk afterward, and staved off the panic attack until she didn't need to fight anymore. She'd kept everyone alive and in one piece. She laughed once, and flexed her hand. The bastard had still needed to be punched. "But hey, I've been meaning to talk to you about yesterday."

"I hear you found that salarian you were looking for," Wrex said. "Wiped out most of Clan Weyrloc in the bargain. We were going to have to get around to it sooner or later. Guess I owe you one."

"Yeah, my ship's AI told me it was a good thing for Urdnot, but that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. That salarian, Maelon? He was working on a cure for the genophage. Badly. His experiments were brutal. Unethical. He tested on prisoners, humans. It was . . . awful." Beth pressed her lips together and looked across the fire. "The thing is, Maelon told us that he approached Urdnot first, and you wouldn't clear his research, because of that. I wanted to say thanks."

"I'm not going to let some salarian torture my people, Shepard," Wrex rumbled. "Or anyone else. There are better ways to do things."

"I agree," Shepard replied. "But there's more. My scientist friend that was with me yesterday looking for Maelon? According to him, for all the brutality of Maelon's research, he _was_ getting some results. Making some progress. We stopped the experiments—but I had Mordin save the findings. If he's right, and he usually is, they could help cure the genophage someday."

"You mean that lunatic actually was getting somewhere?" Wrex demanded. "Some krogan approached Binary Helix a few years back about a cure, then there was Saren's army. So far no one has made any progress with a real cure for the genophage. You telling me that's changed?"

"Maybe," Shepard said, careful to be cautious with her words. "We saved the research, but Wrex—it could be years before we can find someone to follow up on it, and longer than that before they finish a cure and distribute it to your people."

"We'll find a way," Wrex said, and the thing was, Shepard believed him. He'd done incredible things in Urdnot already. She'd always known Wrex was different from other krogan, but she'd never dreamed he had it in him to pull the krogan clans together, initiate a breeding program to keep his people from dying out, get his engineers to start working on farming and medical solutions to rebuild Tuchanka. It was amazing.

He was studying her across the bonfire now. "Not many aliens would have done what you did, Shepard," he said. "Not for the krogan."

Shepard folded her arms. "I promised, didn't I?" she reminded him. "I told you two years ago I'd do something to help if I was ever in a position that I could. I was, and I did. And if I can support you and your people again in the future, I'll help again."

"I might be starting to believe you," Wrex grunted, but there was a smile in the back of his eyes.

Shepard leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and looked into the fire. "I'm a little sorry you can't join us on the _Normandy_ ," she admitted. "Tali's with us, too, you know. It'd be just like old times." Wrex started to open his mouth, but Shepard raised her hand. "I know why you can't," she told him. "You're doing important work here. I wouldn't have you anywhere else. I'm just saying you'll be missed."

Wrex spread his arms, like that went without saying. "Of course I will. You can always use another krogan. But baby pyjak will do alright for you."

Shepard raised her eyebrow at the affectionate nickname the krogan chief had come up with for her crewmate, smiled, but didn't comment. "He's a little overenthusiastic at times," she said, "But he's young. I'm glad to have him on the team."

"Take care of him," Wrex told her. "He's Urdnot now."

Shepard glanced sideways at Wrex. "Doesn't that mean he should be taking care of me?"

Wrex guffawed. "Well said, Shepard!" Garrus came up then, and Wrex caught Shepard's eye. "Then again, you've got the turian for that, don't you?"

"Got the turian for what now?" Garrus asked. He took a swig from his canteen.

Shepard jumped to her feet. "Garrus! Have you been drinking from that all this time?"

"Well, I thought it might be a bad idea to drink the ryncol, given what happened to _you_ the last time you tried it," Garrus joked.

Wrex was very amused. "Shepard tried ryncol? And she's still standing?"

"She wasn't after she tried it," Garrus told him. "Passed out on the floor of a bathroom in the Citadel. Kasumi told me—that's another of the crew, Wrex. Apparently, they drew on her face. Wish I'd been there. This was before I'd joined up."

Shepard fought her blush back. Embarrassment was irrelevant just now. "The canteen, Garrus! You aren't sick?"

Garrus looked back at her. He seemed genuinely puzzled. "What? Why would I get sick?"

"I was talking to a groundskeeper on the Citadel," Shepard explained hastily. "Asking about fish on the Presidium for a krogan in the wards—long story. He told me how if a turian or quarian gets contaminated with levo bacteria, they can die! And I didn't think! We should get you back to the _Normandy_."

Garrus blinked. "What? Because you borrowed my canteen earlier?" His mandibles flared then. "Shepard, that kind of reaction to levo contamination only happens when someone has a severe allergy and goes into anaphylactic shock—it'd be like a human allergy to . . . peanuts. That's a thing, right?" He looked to Shepard for confirmation.

"Uh . . . yeah. You mean—"

"I'm not allergic, Shepard." He laughed. "I thought you knew. Remember back on the _SR-1_? The last night before you left?"

Shepard sat down hard. "Oh. You gave me your canteen that time, too, didn't you? Um. Okay." Now she really was blushing, and not just because she'd looked like a total idiot just now and both Garrus and Wrex were grinning at her for flipping out like she was Vakarian's mother or something. They'd have a field day with this. She'd never hear the end of it, but the worst part was how her mind was leaping around like a hyperactive rabbit about what it might mean, if Garrus _really_ wasn't allergic to levo.

She put it down to the concussion.

" _Okay_ ," Garrus repeated, still laughing a little.

Wrex took his dinner off the fire and took a huge bite out of the still glowing flesh. His eyes danced in the firelight. "Well. Aren't you two cute," he said. " _You_ couldn't do much better, Garrus, but Shepard might consider settling down with a nice krogan instead. Like that asari that just moved in—Ereba. Smart girl."

Shepard snorted. "Settle down? Me? Have we met?" she joked. "Hi, I'm Commander Shepard, badass N7, first human Spectre, currently employed by a bunch of racist terrorists on a _suicide mission_ to save the human colonies in the Terminus. How do you feel about zombies? Let me tell you about the time a bunch of mad scientists brought me back from the dead! I enjoy long walks in the galaxy's brightest centers of culture. Hope you don't mind if I bring along my rifle! Or the mercs that will be shooting at me. Let's talk about marriage and kids." She folded her arms and smirked at Wrex.

Garrus, off to her right, snickered. "Um, Shepard?" he said. "You realize that long shootouts through city centers are _exactly_ what krogan look for in a relationship, right?"

Shepard glanced at Wrex, and sure enough, he was grinning like a maniac, entirely too amused. She groaned and cupped her head in her hands. "Krogan. You're all insane."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Wrex advised. He leered at her, egging her on. "Of course, once you go krogan, you never go back."

Shepard rubbed her eyes, and lowered her hands. "As fun as that sounds, I think I'll still pass," In the darkness, Shepard's tired eyes slid past Wrex. "It's not just krogan. I don't fraternize, Wrex," she said, serious now. "I mean, a fling every now and then, a one night stand? Sure. Everybody has needs. But never when things might get serious. Things always get messy when feelings are involved, and sooner or later, someone's bound to get hurt. Given the way my life works? Probably sooner."

She'd effectively killed the joshing. Wrex huffed. "Hard way to live, Shepard," he remarked. A melancholy fell over the campfire.

Garrus hummed. "She does have a point. Relationships in the military are hard work, especially when you're on a suicide mission. Well. It's just another thing you can lose, isn't it? On the other hand, sometimes on a suicide mission, it helps to have a reason to fight, something more than 'we need to beat the bad guys.'"

Shepard laughed, and it was a tired, hollow sound. "Honestly? I just think I'm lucky my bad guys really do need to be beat, Garrus. I didn't get a lot of choice about whether or not I was going to fight them this time around. Never signed up with Cerberus. But then, there's not a lot left outside them for me, either, anymore. If there ever was." Shepard stared at her hands for a long moment, then cleared her throat. She hadn't meant to be so honest. God, she needed to go back to the ship and have Dr. Chakwas take a look at her head.

Wrex broke the silence. "Well, you're always welcome on Tuchanka. It's a pile of rubble, but it's _our_ pile," Wrex said.

It was a generous offer, and a sincere one. Shepard forced a smile. "Thanks."

"Sure you won't stick around a few days?" Wrex asked. "Baby pyjak could have some fun as the first krogan in a generation to kill a thresher maw at his Rite. As his krannt, you'd receive honors, too. Even you, Garrus."

Shepard shook her head. "Wrex, I'd love to. I really would. I can't tell you how much fun it'd be if the worst things I had to deal with for a few days were thieving pyjaks and krogan encroaching on Urdnot's borders. But I have to take care of my team. They're going into a suicide mission. The least I can do for them all is make sure all their loose ends are tied up." Garrus tried to catch her eye, and Shepard looked away. A couple days ago, Garrus had finally tracked down Sidonis. He wanted to go after him now. Shepard had said they could, but she still didn't feel good about it.

Across the camp, Grunt had caught sight of them up by Wrex's dwelling, and Shepard swore he sent three Urdnot sprawling. He shoved his way out of the horde of well-wishers and revelers and made his way up to where they were sitting.

"Shepard! Garrus!" He sounded like he'd had a few too many. "What are you doing here? The party's down there!"

Shepard stood. "Not anymore it's not, big guy," she told him. "It's time to go."

"Is it really?" Grunt asked, pouting, inasmuch as a quarter-ton krogan teenager _could_ pout. Grunt was nearly two meters tall, a shotgun-toting juggernaut of mass destruction, but looking at him, Shepard was irresistibly reminded of a little kid whining about curfew to his mama.

"Trust me, you'll want to get there before the hangover hits," Garrus told Grunt. He paused, considering this. "Though— _we_ won't want you there when the hangover hits. Maybe we should leave him," he suggested to Beth.

"I am krogan! Hangovers have no power over me!" Grunt boasted.

Wrex laughed. "Can see you don't let him out much, Shepard. How much have you had, whelp?"

"Too much," Beth answered on behalf of her inebriated charge. She pulled up her omni-tool and signaled for the shuttle. "Let's go, buddy. Come on."

"Today was great," Grunt said, letting Beth put her arm around his back and propel him toward the landing zone. "Heh heh, do you remember when you shot that thresher maw? And when we tore Uvenk in half?"

"I remember," Beth told him. She paused by Wrex, and extended her arm. They clasped forearms, and Garrus fell in line behind her.

"Where are we going tomorrow? Will there be husks, like on Horizon?"

Shepard led Grunt away. "I'm sure we'll find some husks for you to stomp into the ground sometime, Grunt," she promised.

"Good. I can't wait, Battlemaster. Heh. Battlemaster."

"That's right, buddy," Shepard sighed. "Battlemaster." That was what she was now, she thought. _Battlemaster._ The champion of humanity. So good she hadn't been allowed to rot away on Alchera two years ago, but had been resurrected to lead the charge into worse wars. Whether she wanted to or not.

* * *

 **LETTERS TO AND FROM AN INFORMATION BROKER, PART TWO**

Time Fix: A couple days after the last installment up to the point where letters are concurrent with this chapter.

* * *

 **[AFTER A 125-CREDIT TRANSFER]**

 _Kaidan:_

 _I have to be honest. I don't particularly care for the questions you've been asking. We served together on Shepard's squad. While I have not yet told you anything that anyone couldn't find if they looked, reporting on Shepard's movements here on Illium seems wrong. She's my friend. She's your friend. She trusts me. Helping you investigate her seems like a betrayal. I'll tell you what you want to know, but only because I'm certain it will help prove to you that Shepard is still the woman we knew two years ago, and as deserving of your trust now as she was then._

 _Shepard came to Illium looking for an asari justicar named Samara. I've attached files on Samara's background and history. She's a respected and honorable law enforcement personage from asari space, devoted to justice and with centuries of experience. A detective in the inner city attests that Samara swore an oath of loyalty to Shepard after Shepard located and dismantled a local nest of Eclipse mercenaries, and provided crucial information that helped to close a murder case and apprehend a smuggler._

 _About the Eclipse—good call, though I don't know where you got your information. Annika again? Shepard has had several altercations with the Eclipse in this cluster besides the one involving Samara. There were two others in her recent visit to Nos Astra alone. It reminds me of several missions we stumbled across with Shepard on the SR-1, particularly the Blake syndicate and the one with Nassana Dantius' sister's slaving operation. Coincidentally enough, one of the incidents last week involved Nassana Dantius. She'd left the Citadel and set up a business here in Nos Astra. For some reason Dantius was paranoid and had hired an Eclipse security detail to protect her offices. She had ordered these mercenaries to fire on any workers in the offices after closing. Shepard happened to be in the area when this occurred. She interfered in the situation and saved the lives of several innocent workers._

 _Nassana Dantius was not as lucky, though as ballistics indicate the bullet used to kill her was not fired from one of Shepard's weapons or the weapons of her companions, perhaps Nassana's paranoia had some basis in fact after all. Shepard was cleared of any blame in the entire affair. Investigators ruled that the footage from Dantius Towers proves that Shepard acted in defense of herself and others._

 _I still don't like this._

 _Liara_

* * *

 **[AFTER A 100-CREDIT TRANSFER]**

 _Kaidan:_

 _My latest reports place Shepard on Tuchanka, of all places. There isn't a great deal of information on what business she might have in the DMZ, but she's been seen in Clan Urdnot, which probably means she's been talking with Wrex._

 _Wrex has taken over leadership of Urdnot and is trying to rally the clans, according to my sources. Shepard may be trying to help. There are rumors she may have been involved in recent tensions with the rival clans Gavatog and Weyrloc. Of course, given your theories on Shepard's continued hostilities with the major mercenary gangs in the Terminus, if Shepard has had any involvement in action against Clan Weyrloc it might take on new significance. Clan Weyrloc founded the Blood Pack and its overall leaders have historically been based on Tuchanka._

 _Regards,_

 _Liara_

* * *

 **A/N: Wrex didn't really get a focus chapter in** _ **Awakening**_ **, because I don't really think he starts coming** _ **into**_ **focus until he leaves the party. So I wanted to revisit him here.**

 **This is also kind of a (preemptive) retort to Jacob in ME3. On Gellix, he tells a female Shepard (whether or not they were involved), that the** _ **Normandy**_ **is her true love. That always stuck in my throat. It might be true for some Shepards, but it certainly isn't** _ **necessarily**_ **true, and coming from a former Cerberus agent, it's almost too much to take. Shepard didn't get a say in whether she was brought back to life. She didn't get a chance to refuse reenlistment—by the time the Illusive Man** _ **theoretically**_ **would have let her walk away, he reveals lives really are depending on her continued service, oh, and by the way, he's got Joker and Chakwas—noncombatants close to Shepard surrounded by more Cerberus agents than she can fight off alone. The fact is, by the time ME2 hits, things have changed from "enlisted soldier/volunteer for the Spectres" to "participation required." Shepard's leadership has become essential to the fight against the Reapers—whether or not she still feels like fighting. My Beth really doesn't (though in fairness, if she had an option to quit the fight, she'd still be fighting, just not for Cerberus). Most of the galaxy (and even some of her crew) needs to believe Shepard enjoys being Commander Shepard. I wanted her to get a chance to say otherwise to two of the people that could take it.**

 **Review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	6. Letting Go

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XXXVI: "The Well of Urd: Odin's Answer."**

* * *

VI

Letting Go

Jack trained her pistol on Aresh's head. Aresh wasn't even flinching. It was like it didn't even register. The scrubby, dark little man just stared at Jack's face, eyes glassy, still seeing Subject Zero as she'd been all those years ago. "I stopped it, all of it!" Jack snapped. "Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed!"

"Everything we went through must have been worth something!" The words tore from Aresh's throat. The man was unreachable in a way Jack hadn't been so far, but this is where she'd come from, this was who she'd been. This was Jack's past and her present, and what happened here would define her future. It was Jack's Ontarom, and depending on how things fell out, Shepard knew she could save Jack here or lose her forever.

"We've got your bomb," she said. "We can blow this place, but that still leaves him. What are you going to do, Jack?"

"That's easy," Jack snarled. She cocked her pistol.

"Just leave me here," Aresh said. "This is where I belong."

"Fuck that!" Jack's biotics flared, and she shoved Aresh to his knees. Now he understood they were talking about killing him. He started to tremble. He'd been one of the lab rats. Everything the sick bastards had done to him here had been to test biotic amplification methods to use on Jack. His biotic abilities were no match for Subject Zero.

Beth stepped forward. "Dead or alive, Jack, he's always going to be here. That going to be you, too?" Jack paused. She looked up at Shepard, eyes glinting, haunted by the cell, by the whole place, by everything that had been done to her.

"He wants to restart this place. He needs to die!"

"And how the hell is he going to do that, huh? We killed his mercs, and they weren't satisfied anymore anyway. He's obviously insane. He's never going to restart this facility. You don't have to kill him." Jack's hand shook, and her arm lowered a couple centimeters.

"You listen to me," Beth said. "Everyone has their own shit to sort through. You more than most. Fine. That's not fair, and it sucks. I get it. But in the end, you've got to make the same choice everyone else in the galaxy makes, Jack: will you take charge, or will you continue to let your past own you? You keep looking for all the assholes that experimented on you, used you, that's all you're ever going to find, and you won't ever see what's really in front of you." Shepard gestured at Aresh, and Jack looked again at the shaking man, obsessed with their shared past, the abuse he'd undergone. She swallowed.

She was getting through to Jack, so Beth continued. "You keep reacting to the past, and blowing this place to hell won't do shit: you will always be here, just like this bastard. You've got a chance for something better, to screw them all over and be your own person, be the one you wish you'd known then."

"I never saw—"Jack started angrily.

"Don't tell me you never!" Beth retorted, hot herself now, shooting the words back at Jack like bullets. "You know what's right. It doesn't matter that you've never seen it; you're so damn angry because you know how you should've been treated, how the galaxy _should_ work. So you weren't. Fuck that! Be what you wanted to see! You're strong, smart _,_ so much better than you've been. Choose now: who are you going to be? Do you have the balls to let go, or not?"

Now Shepard stepped back and folded her arms. She waited.

Jack closed her eyes tight for half a second. "Fuck!" she swore. She lowered her pistol, waved it at Aresh, who was looking at Shepard now like she'd sprouted three heads. "Get out of here. Go!"

Aresh looked back at Jack, looked at Shepard. Then he jumped up and bolted.

Shepard nodded once. Jack breathed out shakily. She wasn't sure she'd done the right thing. But already she stood a little straighter, a little less like she was carrying the weight of a planet on her thin, scarred shoulders. But from the doorway, the disapproval coming off Garrus was tangible. Beth could feel it like a cold wind on the back of her neck. She turned, and met his furious, steel-blue gaze over the bomb they'd brought to Pragia with defiance, and jerked her head for him to help her start priming the explosives.

* * *

The crater that had once been the Teltin facility had long since dropped out of sight, and they were nearly in orbit, waiting for the _Normandy_ to swing back around, before Jack spoke. She didn't look at Shepard. Her eyes stared at the wall, like she was still seeing her cell. "So what's your shit?" she asked.

Beth didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Doesn't matter," she answered. "I had to move past it, same as anyone."

Jack thought about this, and let it be. "Did you mean all that stuff you said back there?" she asked. Her voice was smaller, almost childlike. "That I can—shit, I'm no good at this—"

Beth took pity on her. "Yes. I meant it. You can be whatever you want to be." Beside her, Shepard heard Garrus scoff, almost inaudibly. She ignored him. Jack was the priority here. "You proved it back there. I never thought I'd see you show mercy."

"He was trapped in the past. Reliving it every day. You showed how that could be me. I'm not getting stuck like that. I'm better than him, and I'm sure as hell not carrying that crater around with me," Jack declared. Now she sat up, eyes alight with a strength she hadn't had before, determination, maybe still fueled by anger but no longer directed toward hatred and revenge.

Shepard nodded. "Good. Don't. Leave it there. Moments like that can change you, but only if you let them and keep moving forward. Do you feel different now?"

Garrus huffed again, and this time, Jack heard him. She shrugged. "I know that place is gone." She eyed Garrus, and added, "But I still kind of want to kill every person I see. No offense."

Shepard's stomach did that familiar little swoop as the shuttle swept into the cargo bay and adjusted to the larger ship's momentum, then came to rest. The shuttle door opened. Jack rose, and Beth followed her out of the shuttle into the cargo bay. "I'll take what I can get, Jack. It's not like things are going to get easier for you overnight. You know that."

Jack lingered by the shuttle, hands shoved deep into her spacious pockets. "Yeah. But still. You did a lot. I . . . I owe you one, Shepard. Let's just—leave it at that. Get back to work. If it doesn't kill us all."

"We can't go pirate queen if it does," Beth joked.

"Shit, do you know how we could tear it up?" Jack grinned, relishing her old favorite fantasy. She walked off chuckling. "Later, Shepard."

Garrus started to stalk off after her, but Shepard stepped in his path and folded her arms. "Problem?" she asked.

He tried to blow her off. "You handle things the way you want, Shepard. You always do."

"If you've got a problem, say so, Garrus." Shepard tilted her head. "You finally ready to talk about it?" She thought back to when all the trouble had started, three days ago on the Citadel.

* * *

 _She could hear Garrus breathing over the radio as she'd waited in the square. Beth had wanted to say something, but she'd tried and tried again, and he'd blown her off every time. She'd been able to find the words when she was explaining to him why she'd walked away on Ontarom two years ago. But every time she tried to explain how she felt to Garrus now, her words dried up and her throat closed, and when she closed her eyes all she could see was Garrus on the floor in that base on Omega, lying in a pool of his own blood. He'd been alone in that situation because of Lantar Sidonis, and if Beth was absolutely honest with herself, she wanted that piece of shit dead too. For Garrus's dead team, for the weight in his step and the weariness in his voice, for his face that would never be the same, she wanted that cowardly, traitorous son of a bitch dead. But she didn't want Garrus to kill him. She really, really didn't want Garrus to kill him._

 _Every step they'd taken toward Sidonis, Garrus had grown darker, angrier, more unstable. They'd had Harkin trussed up for Bailey, bruised and without an escape. He so obviously wasn't worth killing, but Beth honestly didn't know if Harkin would have survived if she hadn't been there when Garrus interrogated him. The light in his eyes, the edge in his voice, the tension he carried in every muscle was dangerous. Garrus wasn't pursuing justice, he was after revenge. He was going off the deep end, and if he surrendered to it, let hate and anger drive him like this, when he shot Sidonis he'd shoot a hole through his own soul._

'What would you do if someone betrayed you?' _he'd asked. Beth hadn't had an answer for that. For victimization, for murder of friends and lover, she had a reply. Every day she walked the deck of the_ Normandy _with members of the organization responsible for Akuze. But she didn't have an answer for that heart-betrayal. No reason why Garrus should let Judas live while the blood of his friends cried out from Omega's barren, thirsty ground, except for what it would do to him to kill for revenge. And Garrus didn't give a damn about that so long as the blood debt was paid._

 _Garrus's voice had sounded in her ear like a death knell. "Alright. There he is. Wave him over and keep him talking."_

 _She'd seen him immediately, just known who he was by the way he kept his head down, the way his eyes shifted, like a rat's. Shepard had tipped Sidonis a nod, and he'd seen her and come over. He'd still thought this was an identity thing._

 _"You're in my shot," Garrus had growled. "Move to the side."_

 _And that's when Beth had gone crazy, and hadn't. "Listen, Sidonis. Stand still," she'd whispered._

 _He'd jumped. "Don't ever say that name aloud," he had hissed._

 _"Too late for that now," Beth'd said, speaking quickly. "Garrus is here, and he wants you dead."_

 _Sidonis had craned his neck around, started to tremble. "Garrus? Is this some kind of joke?"_

 _"Damn it, Shepard! If he moves, I'm taking the shot!"_

 _Shepard had felt Garrus's sights on the back of her head like a searing point of heat. She'd known the anger he had to be feeling at her, known his finger had to be tight on the trigger. Garrus'd taken two guys out with a single shot before, and she and Sidonis weren't even standing at maximum range._

 _Sidonis had looked back at her, "You're not kidding, are you? Screw this. I'm not sticking around here to find out. Tell Garrus I had my own problems."_

 _Beth's heart had leapt into her throat, and she'd seized the scum's arm. "Don't move!"_

 _"Get off me!"_

 _"I am the only thing standing between you and a hole in the head. Do. Not. Move."_

 _Sidonis had looked behind her, collapsed in on himself. "Fuck! Look . . . I didn't want to do it," he rushed to say. "I didn't have a choice."_

 _"Everyone has a choice," Garrus had snarled. But he was listening. Beth breathed shakily, trembling herself as adrenaline had raced through her veins at what she could swear were FTL speeds. Her muscles ached with the effort of not moving._

 _"They got to me," Sidonis continued. "Said they'd kill me if I didn't help. What was I supposed to do?" Bile had risen in Beth's mouth. Her hand had itched to slap the bastard, to shoot him herself._

 _"Let me take the shot, Shepard! He's a damn coward!" Garrus had snapped._

 _But Beth kept talking. "That's it? You were just trying to save your own skin?"_

 _"I know what I did. I know they died because of me," Sidonis had said, quietly now. He'd moved away, and even through her hatred and contempt for the man, Beth had moved with him, keeping her head between Sidonis's head and Garrus's rifle. "And I have to live with that. I wake up every night . . . sick . . . and sweating. Each of their faces staring at me . . . accusing me. I'm already a dead man. I don't sleep. Food has no taste. Some days I just want it to be over."_

 _"Just give me the chance," Garrus had hissed._

 _Judas had hung himself. A final act of greed and cowardice, a refusal to live with the guilt of his actions. For Judas, death had been a mercy. Beth had felt a sudden rush of exultation. She would extend no such mercy to Lantar Sidonis. "He's already paying for his crime, Garrus. He'll pay for the rest of his life," she'd said, speaking directly over the radio for the first time in Sidonis's hearing._

 _"He hasn't paid enough," Garrus had argued. "He still has his life."_

 _Beth had snorted. "Look at him, Garrus. This is a man that sold his soul to save his skin. Now he has to pay the devil. Leave him to it. He's already in Hell. There's nothing for you to kill." She'd taken fierce pleasure in saying the words, and Sidonis had flinched beneath every one._

 _"My men . . . they deserved better." The words were a lament._

 _"Tell Garrus . . . I guess there's nothing I can say to make it right," Sidonis had sighed._

 _Just as she'd felt Garrus's crosshairs on her, Beth felt it when they fell. "Just . . . go. Tell him to go."_

 _"Get out of here, you bastard," she'd said. "He's letting you live. Do something with it."_

 _"I . . . I'll try," Sidonis stammered. "Garrus—I'll make it up to you somehow. Thank you," he'd added to Shepard. "For talking to him."_

 _She'd shaken her head. "I didn't do it for you."_

 _He'd nodded, once. His neck flushed blue with shame, and the rat had scurried away, head down._

* * *

"What's to talk about?" Garrus asked her now. "You did the same thing with Sidonis you always do, and you just did it again down on Pragia. It doesn't matter what anyone else wants, you butt in and you make sure they handle it the way _you_ think it should be handled."

"Damn right I do," Shepard snapped, not bothering to deny it. "If I see someone about to make a bad decision and I can stop it, you bet your ass I'm going to stop it. Jack didn't need to kill Aresh on Pragia; _you_ didn't need to kill Sidonis on the Citadel."

"You think he deserved to live?" Garrus demanded.

Shepard took off her gauntlets, walked over to the table where she kept her workout materials, laid them down, and picked up the cloth she used to wrap her hands for the punching bag. "No, I don't. All I knew was it'd be wrong for _you_ to kill him."

She finished wrapping her hands, and tossed the wrap to Garrus. He caught it and her intention at once, and stripped off his gauntlets too. It was instinctive for him. They were having a serious disagreement, their first one, so they were going to fight it out. Turian conflict resolution. At least it ought to be more of a fair fight than if he'd fought someone else, Shepard thought. Well, maybe. She had her N7 training and Cerberus cybernetic upgrades, but Garrus still had almost thirty centimeters on her, and probably almost as many kilograms. He had the reach of her, and odds were he had better training in interspecies hand-to-hand combat, too, as former C-Sec and a turian. Shepard grimaced. Upon consideration, this might hurt.

The two of them stripped down to their underarmor bodysuits and stacked the plating under the table. "Who else, Shepard?" Garrus argued as they worked. "If not me, then who? Ten good men died because of him, and because you stuck your nose in, he walked!"

He squared off opposite her, and Shepard came at him, testing his defenses. "And so did you," she grunted. "You walked out of the markets that day, and you don't have to live with the knowledge that you killed the guy that was your friend once." Garrus blocked her first few punches easily, and Shepard used the time to size him up as an opponent. Turians had some natural armor, but considering their anatomy she could guess at a few weak points she could hit. The crest and mandibles were probably vulnerable to bending the wrong way just like human fingers, and they wouldn't have their cowls unless the neck needed that sort of protection. The waist might be a weak point, and the spurs definitely were. But which blows were illegal in turian hand-to-hand?

Garrus took advantage of her hesitation to level a punch at her jaw. He came in hard and fast, and Shepard barely had time to sidestep, let alone block. He wasn't going to hold anything back. "It wasn't your call to make!" Garrus snarled. He swung low this time, aiming for her gut, but this time, Shepard was ready for him. She seized his arm and moved to throw, but Garrus had anticipated her. He wrenched his arm free and had hers in a blink of an eye. He forced it up behind her back. Shepard hissed between gritted teeth, and kicked back hard, right where Garrus's spur met his shin. He grunted in pain, but before she could bring her free elbow back up under his ribs he let go and jumped back. Huh, Shepard thought. The waist _was_ a weak point.

He watched her, wary now, and she spread her arms in challenge. "You asked for my help, Vakarian," she accused him. "It's not like you needed it. You're the fucking Archangel. You could've tracked Sidonis down all on your own. I would've given you leave. But no—you asked me to be there. You sent me to talk to him. How well do you know me? What the hell did you expect?"

Shepard closed with Garrus again and thrust her palm out toward his nose. This time Garrus, mimicking her move earlier, sidestepped, but instead of seizing her arm, he used the moment to throw his own punch at her unguarded torso. It hit hard, and Shepard gasped as the air went out of her, even as she sprang up on her heels to headbutt him. Her skull hit his faceplate, and he staggered back, but Shepard had forgotten about turian armoring in the heat of the moment. She staggered back, too, swearing.

Garrus used the split second she was disoriented to tackle her and take the fight to the ground, but before he could get a grip or throw a punch, Shepard bridged, caught Garrus's leg in a lock, and threw them over. "What did you want?" she panted. "Your Spectre buddy to clean up the murder you were planning to commit on the Citadel?"

She tried to put her forearm across his windpipe to cut off his air but was frustrated by the cowl. Her arm fumbled for a lock as her other hand sought to punch, but Garrus caught her fist, elbowed the pressure point in her side, and rolled her back over. He had both her arms pinned on either side of her head before she could recover.

Garrus's silver-blue eyes were like glaciers, and his breath was hot in Beth's face. "You know I'd never take advantage of your Spectre status," he seethed. "I said I'd accept the consequences of my actions, and I meant it. I wanted my friend to be there and support my decision!"

Garrus's full weight was pinning Shepard now. He was as strong as he was fast. On a human, Shepard knew, the thing to do would be to jerk her knee up into the groin, but she'd already screwed up twice by fighting Garrus like a human. She didn't even know if turian males carried their junk in the same way humans did. So on a hunch, she dug her knee instead into the thick muscle of Garrus's inner thigh. She was rewarded when Garrus grunted and his leg went limp. Not so heavily armored there, Shepard thought, in fierce satisfaction. She jackknifed and seized Garrus's right wrist. She rolled up and over his now-yielding body, taking his wrist with her, wrenching it behind his back. She tried to step up on his spur, but Garrus had just enough presence of mind to move his leg away from a blow that might have broken it, escaping her grip on his wrist at the same time. But he couldn't stop her standing.

Garrus was up on his feet again in an instant, though, and back in a ready stance. Shepard squared off with him again, abdomen and side throbbing, head still ringing. He was putting a little more weight on one leg than the other, though, she noticed, and as she watched he flexed his wrist. She'd hurt him too.

"I couldn't support my friend becoming a murderer, Garrus!" she cried. "That's what it would've been there: murder, whether or not it was justified. I couldn't sit by and watch you do that to yourself. You're too important to me! I won't support you ruining your life!"

Garrus barked a laugh. "What life?" he ground out. "We're on a suicide mission, remember?"

He sprang at her and tackled her again. Shepard's back slammed into the wall behind the punching bag, and as Garrus came up flush against her, she gasped, not just because he'd winded her again. It appeared that maybe she could have gone for a knee to the groin after all. He'd pinned her wrists again, but held them loosely, and although Shepard knew they were still fighting, she wondered if they were still _fighting_.

So this time, she didn't try to escape. Instead, she just answered. "No. We're not," she told him in a low, deadly serious voice. "Maybe I thought we were. Maybe I even wanted to be. But screw it. I am not going through the Omega-4 relay to die again!" Garrus's hands tightened on her wrists, and his gaze intensified, if that was even possible. Somehow, that had been something he'd wanted to hear, so Shepard kept talking. "We have a life ahead of us, Garrus, and you need to make something of yours. That's only going to happen if you let go and move on—unless you want to end up like Massani."

Garrus released her all at once and staggered back, almost like she'd thrown another punch. Zorya was all too fresh in both their minds—the burning refinery, the screaming workers, slaves they'd come to free, and Zaeed's poisonous, reckless hatred. _Let these people burn! Vido dies, whatever the cost!_ "That was completely different!" Garrus gasped. "Zaeed was willing to kill innocents to get to the man that had hurt him. I was after Sidonis for what he did to my team, and I would never—I would _never_ —"

Shepard took a step away from the wall and folded her arms. "No?" she asked him, voice quiet. "Then tell me this, Garrus: Back there in the market, just how close were you to shooting through me to get to Sidonis?"

She held his gaze, daring him to lie, and Garrus was the one who dropped his eyes first. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. "There was a moment. Just a _moment_ , where I thought about shooting you in the leg. Just to get you down and out of the way." He bowed his head. "I'm sorry."

Shepard went over to the table by the punching bag again, and. "I kind of figured," she told Garrus. She started unwrapping her hands, rewrapping the fabric into its roll as she went. She knew they were done. They both did.

Garrus stayed where he was, head down. "Thinking that—I couldn't believe it. It made me stop. Really listen to what you were saying."

"Yeah," Shepard said. She picked up the liniment she kept on the table for when she'd overworked and strained herself, and began rubbing it in to her sore wrists. "I kind of counted on that when I stayed in the shot." She grimaced, now avoiding looking at him too. "I hated that I had to make you feel that way, but you weren't giving me a lot of options. Still—I'm sorry I put you in that position." She was quiet a moment, then added. "I'm not sorry I did what I did. I'd do it again."

Garrus sighed. "I don't know, Shepard. I keep thinking about it, how I felt when you were in the scope, but also what you said. How Sidonis sold his soul to save his skin, and now he has to pay the devil. And what he said. Whatever good is still in that bastard is going to torture him the rest of his miserable life. It still isn't justice, but whatever it is, it's better than a quick and easy death. It wasn't your call, but . . . it's better than the one I would have made."

Shepard jerked her head at Garrus, and he came over to the table. She handed him the liniment, thankful it was smart medicine, like medi-gel. "Use it on your wrist, too," she instructed.

"Thanks, Shepard."

"Yeah." Shepard started refitting her leg armor back on for the trek back up to her cabin.

Garrus was unwrapping his hands and applying the medicine. "No, really," he said. "For _everything_. This stuff, the fight, getting me off Omega—and for what you did with Sidonis. Maybe sometimes I need that, like with Saleon. Someone to remind me where the line is."

"Once I needed it, too," Beth reminded him. "You helped me do the right thing. You're always there for me, Garrus. One day _I_ might not like the way _you_ do it, and then _I_ might get pissed."

Garrus finished applying the liniment to his wrist. His mandibles flared. "Well, I promise when that day comes we can beat up on each other some more. If you want." He gestured at her torso. "Think I got you pretty good once or twice." He held out the still-open tube back to her.

Shepard felt her face start to heat up and stopped in the act of refitting her breastplate. It was true. She knew there was a bad bruise forming under her ribs. Before their fight she might not have thought twice about stripping off her top entirely to treat it. Now she remembered the bulkhead at her back, Garrus's intense expression, his body against hers, and she wasn't so sure. Her gaze darted back to the liniment, then back to Garrus. There was a glint in the back of his eyes that gave her pause.

No, she decided. Somehow, she didn't think so. Shepard fastened her breastplate, and if her fingers trembled a bit, she hoped he didn't notice. "I got in a few hits myself," she said, "If you hit the showers and I hit my cabin, it should take care of both of us. Get the explosives stink and krogan guts off too." She bent down and picked up her gauntlets.

Garrus stood there, looking about as amused as he ever had before. He screwed the top back onto the liniment and put it back in its place on the table. "You sure you're alright, Shepard? You're a little . . . pink." He tapped his visor. "Heart rate's a bit fast, too."

Shepard blushed even hotter. "Just the exercise, Vakarian," she lied, cursing that damn visor. It was cheating as far as she was concerned.

Garrus's laugh rumbled low in his chest. "You didn't even break a sweat," he pointed out.

"I'm fine!" Shepard snapped. "I can tell you one thing, though: if I'm late for rounds because of you, I won't be alright. I will be very annoyed. Dismissed!" She shook her gauntlets at him for emphasis, spun on her heel, and stalked off with what was left of her dignity toward the elevator. Behind her, Garrus's chuckles echoed through the hold.

* * *

 **LETTERS TO AND FROM AN INFORMATION BROKER, PART THREE**

Time Fix: Fairly concurrent with the chapter, within the last two days.

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _You were interested in any intel on Shepard's altercations with the Eclipse, Blood Pack, or Blue Suns mercenary gangs? I didn't think there was anything to it, but I may have been wrong. My Alliance and C-Sec contacts from the Citadel inform me that Shepard has recently brought down an entire operation of Blue Suns involved in illegal identity modification, apparently headed by Ambassador Udina's old C-Sec contact, Harkin._

 _You recall Harkin, of course. He was a dirty C-Sec officer with multiple infractions for drinking on the job, unnecessary violence during interrogations, accepting bribes, and so on. Politicians had applied leverage to keep him on the force, but since he helped us first find Garrus for the Saren investigation his leeway has run out. He turned to crime, and has evidently been using his knowledge of C-Sec systems to help criminals drop off the grid, aided by the Blue Suns. Shepard seems to have gone after Harkin on her own last week, with Garrus and one other squadmate. They tipped C-Sec off about the location of the Blue Suns base and Harkin was arrested, but according to reports almost all Blue Suns had already been cleared._

 _Don't know if it's relevant, but almost immediately thereafter a turian named Lantar Sidonis turned himself in to C-Sec. Sidonis confessed to using Harkin's operation to change his identity and drop off the grid in order to cover up his role in a conspiracy to murder. However, as the murders in question happened on Omega, punishment for the crime was well out of C-Sec and even Council jurisdiction._

 _On an unrelated note, but possibly of interest to you—while Shepard was on the Citadel she also stopped the assassination of a turian politician with a turian and a drell. The turian was most likely Garrus again. The would-be assassin was another drell. He was taken into C-Sec custody. Just thought you might like to know._

 _Regards,_

 _Liara_

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _You asked about the tattooed human on Shepard's squad. I was unable to locate any information on her at first, but my recent investigations into Shepard's fighting with the Blue Suns mercenary group has turned up something at last._

 _Three months ago, Shepard was tagged boarding the prison ship Purgatory just an hour before the mass prison riot that led to the ship's destruction. She had apparently docked to negotiate with the Blue Suns prison administration for the release of a prisoner known as "Jack."_

 _I was able to access the encrypted extranet database of the now defunct ship and find the files. Jack matches up against the physical description you gave me from your encounter on Horizon. From there, I was able to track her across numerous felonies all through the Terminus and Attican Traverse. She's a repeated murderer, arsonist, and criminal: an exceptionally strong biotic, even by asari standards, noted for her violence and impulsive behavior._

 _I admit: Jack with Shepard does worry me. On the bright side, there have been no reports of crimes committed by Jack since she joined up with Shepard. Knowing what Shepard did for Wrex, I have hope that Jack might come out of her experience on the Normandy a changed woman. Nevertheless, I will keep researching Jack to see what else I can find._

 _Regards,_

 _Liara_

* * *

 **Liara,**

 **I've been looking at it upside-down and sideways, and certain things about all this don't add up for me. The Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse are mercenaries. They all have criminal elements, but they're businesses first, and businesses can usually be reasoned with. The Shepard I knew wouldn't blow all the mercs she ran into away without trying to talk first and convince the mercs that crossing her is bad business. That's how we handled Blake and those L2 terrorists. There has to be a reason that every time Shepard's gone up against these guys lately it's ended in a bloodbath. I'd say it looked like a war, but Shepard has obviously had a number of objectives over all this time, so I think the mercs may have some sort of big grudge against Shepard that's made negotiations impossible for her.**

 **I was checking out the earliest stuff I have on Shepard this year, and I think I may have missed something. Around four months ago Shepard was definitely on Omega. There are all sorts of reports that people saw her on the station. Here's the thing: reports of criminal activity in the Terminus systems also say that right around then the bosses of the Omega branches of the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse—historically their biggest criminal elements—all turned up dead in some sort of big gang war, along with dozens of their members and a number of freelance mercenaries. I may be wrong. Shepard might have had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's just that report you sent me about that one guy that came forward after Shepard took down Harkin's operation on the Citadel? Sidonis? The men he claimed to have killed, or helped kill, all died on Omega** _ **four months ago**_ **. There may be something here, Liara, but I can't get at it. If you could try to find out anything you could on the gang war on Omega four months back I'd really appreciate it. Shepard might have gotten herself into some major trouble.**

 **Thanks.**

— **Kaidan**

 **[TRANSFER: 75 CREDITS]**

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _I looked into the gang war on Omega like you asked, and it looks like you may have really found something, though "gang" war isn't really accurate._

 _Four months ago, it seems, the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse all banded together to take down a vigilante group headed by a man calling himself Archangel. Apparently Archangel and his team caused the more vicious elements of Omega quite a lot of trouble over the eighteen months prior to the "war." Serial killers, drug rings, slaving operations, illegal weapons dealing—Archangel ended them, and evidently harried even the major players of Omega enough to justify a truce and alliance to take him and his team down. For the most part the mercenary initiative appears to have succeeded. All those men Lantar Sidonis claimed to C-Sec he helped kill were suspected members of the vigilante group. But the initiative ended in disaster as well, as you already observed. Almost all the mercenaries involved in the war on Archangel turned up dead at the end of it, including the Omega leaders of the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse._

 _If Shepard got involved somehow, as you suspect, what happened on Omega with Archangel could explain her current difficulties with mercenaries throughout the Terminus. I'm going to dig up what I can about the details of the mercenary conflict with Archangel. This is big, whatever it is._

 _Thank you for the tip. This is valuable information, and as such, I'm wiring you a small finder's fee for bringing it to my attention._

 _Regards,_

 _Liara_

 **[TRANSFER: 100 CREDITS]**

* * *

 **A/N: Before anyone jumps down my throat, Garrus didn't win the fight up there; Shepard stopped fighting in order to focus on winning the argument—and she did (though Garrus has a point, and she** _ **is**_ **a self-righteous, interfering busybody). We could debate who would win in a fight if they actually fought through to the end, but in my opinion it's really a hypothetical question. These two characters probably** _ **wouldn't**_ **fight through to the end. They'd work things out like they do here, and the fight would be over. That they fought at all just shows how serious this disagreement was.**

 **LMS**


	7. Dozen Kinds of Wrong

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XXXIX, "Michael and Gabriel."**

* * *

Resurrection: Dozen Kinds of Wrong

Shepard watched Garrus pace around the gunnery, checking systems, tweaking calibrations. That Thanix cannon he'd wanted so badly was damned fussy. Shepard hoped to God it was worth all the trouble and expense when the time came to use it on some Collectors. Garrus did have a deft touch with it, though. Like with his rifle. The mods he had on that thing were nice. Shepard wondered what else Garrus could do with his talons.

She wasn't technically Alliance anymore, after all, and Garrus was technically a volunteer. Not technically under her command. Even if Cerberus did have fraternization regs like the Alliance, and they didn't, they wouldn't apply. Technically. Shepard eyed the gunnery console. She could press that inviting button right now and shut and lock the door, or even do it remotely with her omni-tool. He could pin her up against that fussy Thanix like he'd pinned her against the shuttle bay bulkhead last week, forget the calibrations, and—

 _Dammit!_

But it had been running through her head for weeks, again and again, over and over and over, like a loop transmission that also broadcast the most ungodly fantasies.

Something was very wrong with her.

Shepard responded to some comment or other Garrus made, letting the conversation run on autopilot, glad they were talking again and she could let it run on autopilot. She had bigger problems.

She hadn't been laid in this lifetime. Not since her freak resurrection. That could be the reason for her sudden strange sexual urges. Or maybe it was that the stress had finally taken its toll and she was starting to crack up. Trying to figure out how to save humanity before the Collectors took them all. Trying to figure out how to stay alive long enough to save humanity at all once they'd all gone through the freaking Omega-4 relay. Shepard supposed all that was enough to crack anyone up. Even with the upgrades, the new recruits, and the increasingly committed crew it was going to be a pinch. That sort of stress could make anyone have weird dreams, Shepard reasoned. Daydreams. Probably.

Garrus had starred increasingly in hers ever since she'd first found him again on Omega. Shepard had been trying to ignore it, but she wondered, she did wonder what it'd be like to touch his skin. Skin? Hide? Plates? What did they call it again, on a turian? What would his talons feel like on her skin? She knew the equipment was in more or less the same place, but did it function the same way?

He kept talking, just chatting away. It didn't even matter what about, Shepard always enjoyed the sound of his voice. She wanted to crawl up into his voice and stay.

Except it was so completely wrong in a dozen different ways. Shepard listed them inside her head, trying not to completely zone out on the conversation. He wouldn't mind if she did. Garrus was always saying she needed to take some time to just breathe. But he might ask her what she was thinking about, and she couldn't have that.

He wasn't human. Not even levo-compatible. Not only would sex be weird, they could probably kill each other if they tried anything. Well, not really. Shepard knew enough about science to know they probably wouldn't kill each other. She didn't have the dextro-allergy, because one time she'd eaten his rations by mistake, and another time she'd eaten Tali's to try to prove that the stuff was actually edible (she hadn't been able to choke the whole meal down that time and had had to concede that maybe Tucks _did_ need dextro cooking lessons after all), and she hadn't had any reaction at all either time. And then she knew Garrus wasn't allergic to levo, either—Never mind! It didn't matter! That wasn't the point!

She wasn't a xenophile. She wasn't! Shepard was more willing to work with and befriend aliens than probably 87 percent of the human population and all of Cerberus, always had been, but she wasn't any Kelly Chambers, either! She'd never wanted to sex up anyone outside of her own species, hadn't even considered it before. It was just . . . Garrus. But there was more!

Forget the technicalities of Alliance protocol she wasn't even under anymore, there was no way to get around that Garrus _was_ on her squad. Messing around could go pear-shaped so many ways. It could screw them up on and off the battlefield, and the waves wouldn't stop with her and Garrus. Shepard hadn't come back to herself until they'd recruited Garrus; the team, when it had finally started getting off the ground, had formed around both of them, not just Shepard. Messing around could screw up the entire crew dynamic.

Then Garrus was her friend, too. Certainly the best friend she'd had since she died. Best friend she'd had in years. Probably the best damn friend she'd ever had. Beth didn't want to mess that up acting out on some stupid, nonsensical, totally wrong attraction.

He was looking at her again. Waiting for a response. Beth smiled. "I thought you'd be used to high-risk operations on human ships," she said. "I mean, think about tracking Saren to Ilos."

She clenched her fists to keep herself from shivering with those deep-set, silver-blue sniper's eyes trained on her.

It'd started with stupid, sexy Archangel. Space Batman in his cave after a five-day one-man stand to write an epic about, alone against a hundred pissed-off mercs, with a sniper shot to make old Clarkson from the N7 Academy weep. Beth didn't like vigilantes, but Garrus had done it with such style _._ Archangel wasn't just a vigilante. He was a legend. It would take those three gangs years to recover from his reign of terror, and people would still be talking about it years after that. It had caused Shepard some distress even back when she hadn't known Archangel's identity, disapproving of act and motive and admiring the execution so damn much. When she'd found out Archangel was Garrus and the attraction hadn't gone away, it'd been worse.

Not that she hadn't been glad to get Garrus back. Quite the opposite. She'd never been so happy to see anyone in her life as she'd been on Omega, never as relieved as she'd been when Doc Chakwas had told her he'd be fine after the rocket to the face he'd taken there. She hadn't been what Cerberus wanted, the Shepard they'd commissioned and brought back from the dead, until she had Garrus backing her up. She trusted him first and most. She didn't even have to look behind her on mission to see him guarding her six and kicking ass, because she knew he was. She'd got into the habit of bringing him along every single mission. He worked with anyone, was good in any situation. And because she trusted him, the crew trusted him. Of course Jack and Grunt had gone to him about their concerns after Horizon, when she'd holed up in the docking bay to try to beat herself back into shape. Of course he'd come. It was wonderful, exhilarating, having Garrus with her again, knowing he had her back even when she told him to get lost, knowing she could always, always count on him.

But she'd never had time to recover from Archangel. Never had time to set her head straight and deal with the stupid, problematic attraction. Every mission, she'd hear Garrus's damn voice over the radio, cracking another sarcastic one-liner, and she'd think, _after this, maybe I can help him clean up that torn-up hardsuit, see what the hell he looks like under it, anyway_.

Shepard rather thought the biggest problem was she didn't even want to set her head straight. She blamed Cerberus. They'd probably rebuilt her wrong or something.

But she'd been managing, she'd been dealing, until ten days ago on the Citadel, when the whole thing with Lantar Sidonis had blown up. That mission and all the fallout thereafter had sent Shepard reeling, and she was still trying to recover her equilibrium.

What the hell had she been thinking, anyway, stepping in front of his shot? She hadn't _known_ it would turn out alright. It'd been crazy, but all she'd been able to think about was bringing her friend back from the edge. When word had got out, though—Shepard suspected Kasumi had told Daniels and Donnelly and the story had spread from there—when word had got out, Miranda had read her the riot act for risking herself like that. Miranda had started to warm up to her since they'd rescued Oriana from Henry Lawson's people on Illium, but as far as Shepard could tell, Miranda still had reservations about trusting Garrus.

Beth had guessed things would pan out the way they did when she stepped in the shot, though. She was still trying to figure out what it meant, that their friendship had been stronger in that moment than Garrus's well-justified grudge and his high-powered rifle, that she'd known it would be. She was still trying to deal with the chemicals that had shot through her at the time. She hadn't had a breath to think about it in the moment, but the second she'd seen Garrus again, it had hit her with all the force of a biotic throw that Garrus could have gunned her down, but hadn't, that the juxtaposition there of Garrus's physical power over her with the strength of the influence she had over him had been intoxicating.

Shepard knew it was all purely chemical. A whopping cocktail of adrenaline, fear, and weeks of pent-up worry had set her high, then when her gamble had paid off, relief had locked the whole thing into a positive feedback loop. It wasn't like it meant anything. So why hadn't she been able to ditch the memory? Of course, she knew their little spat a couple days later hadn't helped. _Something_ had gone down in that shuttle bay, but Shepard wasn't completely sure what. She knew what it had _felt_ like, but she didn't want to make any assumptions. After all, she knew turians were almost as weird about violence as the krogan.

At any rate, since their fight, her nonsensical but manageable attraction to Garrus Vakarian had become a distraction. Shepard couldn't keep a lid on her thoughts anymore. They ran wild. She could swear her body temperature ratcheted up at least two degrees every time she was in the same room with Garrus now, and the thing was, she was almost certain he knew. She was more than half convinced he'd been harboring similar ideas. _Almost_ certain. _More than half_ convinced, but not quite positive. It was driving her insane. It was bad enough having the uncharacteristically xenophiliac and definitely self-destructive hots for her best friend the turian vigilante. It would be an absolute disaster if he knew and had been laughing at her behind that damn visor the entire time.

". . . turian ships have more operational discipline than your Alliance, but fewer personal restrictions. Our commanders run us tight, and they know we need to blow off steam. But then I figure you know that. Last week was hardly Alliance protocol."

Shepard shrugged, even as her heart rate picked up a little. "I did some research when you joined the crew to help us take down Saren," she explained. "I wanted you to feel at home on the _Normandy_. Of course, back then, I figured I'd be supervising your fight with Ash or Pressly or one of the others—"One of the crew that had problems with nonhumans, she meant, "Not fighting you myself. I was a little surprised by some of the stuff I turned up back then. It's strange to think of crewmen fighting each other before a mission."

Garrus chuckled. "We're careful, and there's usually a referee. Nobody is going to risk an injury that interferes with the mission. And it's a good way to settle grudges amicably. I remember right before one mission we were about to hit a batarian pirate squad. Very risky. This recon scout and I had been at each other's throats. Nerves, mostly. She suggested we settle it in the ring."

Beth blinked, smiled. Garrus almost never talked about his past. He'd told her a couple C-Sec stories. Mostly they talked guns, enemies, the squad, tactics. This sudden insight into the turian military and Garrus's personal history was intriguing.

"I assume you took her down gently?"

"Actually, she and I were the top-ranked hand-to-hand specialists on the ship. I had reach, but she had flexibility," Garrus said. "It was brutal. After nine rounds, the judge called it a draw. There were a lot of unhappy betters in the training room." He paused, then continued. "We, ah, ended up holding a tiebreaker in her quarters. I had reach, but she had flexibility. More than one way to work off stress, I guess."

The unexpected ending to the story evaporated all that had been left of Beth's distraction. She rapidly went back over the conversation thus far in her head. Beth's skin tingled, and she focused all her attention on Garrus, checking for tells, uncertain he meant what she thought he did. His body was tense as well, poised, waiting for her response.

Beth decided to check. She folded her arms. "You need to work off stress, Garrus? I guess we could go another half dozen rounds in the hold if you didn't get enough the other day. Who knows? Maybe I'll break a sweat this time."

Garrus shook his head. "I've got a feeling that if you did, we'd just end up adding my name to the list of people you've knocked on their asses, Shepard."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, keeping it cool, even as excitement built within her chest. "As I recall, you gave about as good as you got."

"Thanks but no thanks, Shepard," Garrus said. He seemed disappointed, on the verge of ending the conversation. So before he lost his nerve, Shepard stepped up and caught his eye.

"You don't want to spar? Then how are we to get rid of your stress?" Then, as if she'd just now gotten it, she hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Oh, I'm an idiot. You didn't tell me about the relaxed personal restrictions on turian ships because you wanted to spar. Or take that story about the recon scout all the way to its . . . _completion_. Some reason you wanted me to know?" Shepard dropped the sultry tone. "I spent a lot of time on the streets, Vakarian. I know a hook when I see one."

Caught, Garrus let out a nervous laugh. He held up his hands and took a step back. "Ah . . . Shepard, I didn't mean—"

Beth cut him off. "I didn't say you were fishing in the Presidium reservoir."

She let that sink in for a moment. Garrus's mandibles widened in surprise. "Oh! So you _do_ have a weakness for men with scars. I did wonder . . ."

At least he was admitting it now, Shepard thought. "Don't know about that, but for whatever reason I seem to be into you." Shepard said it outright, now absolutely certain of her footing. "So, how about it? You and me, working off some stress together? I promise you: I got plenty flexibility."

"I don't doubt it," Garrus told her, and there was an undertone to his voice that vibrated right up through the soles of Beth's feet and reverberated in her stomach, leaving her throat dry and her face hot. She'd heard it before—now she was thinking about it, she'd been hearing it for a long time—but never quite as strong or obvious as she was hearing it now. "There's nobody in this galaxy I respect more than you, and, I mean, if we can figure out a way to make it work, than why the hell not, right? So yeah . . . _definitely_."

His unmistakable enthusiasm set her head spinning again. Blood roared in Beth's ears as it raced from her head to other parts of her body, and adrenaline coursed through her veins, as potent and damaging as any drug off the streets. She felt wild and reckless. What the hell was she doing? Propositioning her best friend, her squad mate? What the hell was _he_ doing, _taking her up on it_? God, what did they do next?

"I thought I was going insane," Beth told him, half dazed, trying to buy some time. "Hell, maybe I still am. Why the games, Garrus? Why didn't you just say something?"

Garrus's eyes sparkled. "I thought I just did." He laughed again, half-incredulous himself, it seemed. "I thought I was going insane, too, Shepard," he confessed in his turn. "If I was wrong—well, no one wants to be the xenophiliac ass to ruin everything by hitting on an uninterested alien friend. Saw that sometimes in C-Sec. It wasn't pretty."

Shepard snorted. "You were fine letting _me_ be the xenophiliac ass to ruin everything," she grumbled. "God, you _are_ wrong. We _both_ are. We're a dozen kinds of wrong for even considering this!" Her lips twitched up, and she caught Garrus's eye. He'd stiffened, taken half a step back, and Beth rushed to reassure him. "Don't want to take it back, though."

Garrus relaxed a bit. He was as nervous as she was. "Good. Me neither. So I'll see you?" He seemed a bit uncertain, and Beth wondered if despite his time in C-Sec, on the Citadel, and on Omega, this interspecies attraction thing was new to him, too. The new understanding stretched between them, as fragile as spun glass, and Beth panicked to think just how easily she could break it, and what else might break if she did.

"Oh, you'll see me," she promised. Again she wondered what she should do. Garrus didn't seem like he wanted to throw down right here, right now. _Figure out a way to make it work_ , he'd said. So he didn't know, either. He _hadn't_ been with a human before. So what then? Should they start making research plans? Should she kiss him? Beth examined his face. God, she didn't even know how to _kiss_ a turian! To mask her growing panic, Beth shot him a smirk, and decided the best course of action was to retreat and regroup.

Head spinning like a top, Beth sauntered out of the battery. She felt Garrus's eyes on her like lasers as she left. Well, at least she knew she hadn't been imagining things in the shuttle bay.

The door whooshed shut behind her. Minus the need to keep it cool, Beth started walking much, much faster. She was almost running by the time she got to the elevator. One of the crewmen—Buddy Yeats, she thought his name was—looked at her sideways as she dashed in, probably wondering exactly what had sent Commander Shepard absolutely mad.

In her cabin, Beth started all out pacing, up and down the stairs, between the wall and the door fast, fast, trying to wrap her mind around the magnitude of what it was she and Garrus had just agreed to do. "Oh, God, what the hell is wrong with me?" she moaned.

Beth didn't do fraternization and attachment. _Never again_. This was pure, gut attraction for her, she told herself, as hell-outta-nowhere and fantastic as it was. Chemicals. She could probably work it off in a single _stress-relieving_ encounter. If it was just a one-time hookup, there wouldn't be a problem. But while she'd been able to read Kaidan right away and know that he couldn't do that, she'd been completely stymied over Garrus. She hadn't known if turians in general had casual sex, let alone if Garrus did. He never talked about himself. Not until today.

Apparently they did, though. And since he did, it was like he'd said. Why the hell not? Right?

Right?

Just sex. Just sex. Not even sex. That was too intimate a word for what she wanted. Stress relief. Blowing off steam. To work whatever the hell was wrong with her out of her system, help him calm down before what was very probably a suicide run. And they'd still be friends after, and everything would be fine. Everything would be fine.

It was still a dozen kinds of wrong and probably really stupid, of course, but apparently Garrus was cool with that, so there was no reason to sweat it.

So why was she sweating it? Beth stopped up short, feeling the cold perspiration that had broken out all across her forehead. God, she was actually afraid, wasn't she? And she knew why. She swallowed.

It would be so much easier if she didn't like him, she thought. Always before, she'd _eased her tension_ with complete strangers she knew she'd never see again. But Garrus—Garrus was her favorite person in the galaxy. Her best friend. She trusted him absolutely, and on the Citadel, it hadn't been _attraction_ that had made her step in front of that shot, whatevershe'd felt afterwards. And just as she'd never been as glad to see someone in her life as she'd been when she found Garrus again on Omega, she'd never been as scared in her life as those hours she'd spent outside the _Normandy_ 's med bay after he'd taken that rocket to the face, when she hadn't known if he would make it or not, and she'd had to realize just how much she needed Garrus Vakarian not to die.

Yeah. All those . . . feelings . . . might complicate her brilliant plan.

Shit.

Beth clenched her fists so tightly her nails cut into her palm, thrust out her chin. She wouldn't let it, is all. Blowing off steam. Easing tension. That's all this thing with Garrus would ever be.

 _Never again_.

The dirty thoughts, the ungodly fantasies, they were all fair game now. But the rest of it was strictly off-limits, Beth decided. No feelings. No strings. No mess. No fuss. The friendship in one neat little compartment, the sex locked away in another one.

Maybe turians did have casual sex. Beth hadn't had sex since before she'd died, hadn't had sex that meant anything since Sean Ashton, and never meant to again. But she wasn't idiot enough not to know that with humans, at least, _just sex_ could turn into something else, even with the best of intentions. She had to keep it together.

She was a dozen kinds of wrong for considering sex with Garrus in the first place. Well. Apparently he was, too. She had to make sure things stayed _wrong_ , that she didn't twist the wrong into some sort of beautiful sense, even after all this time.

"No. No. _Never again_. _Never again_."

She still didn't want to take it back.

* * *

 **LETTERS WITH AN INFORMATION BROKER, PART FOUR**

 **Time Fix** **: More or less concurrent with this chapter, with in the last few days.**

* * *

 **Liara,**

 **It sounds like this Archangel was doing a lot of good on Omega, though working as a successful vigilante on Omega has to be the next thing to suicide. Had to be intense, too. What kind of people would take on that sort of job? Can you imagine? Though a guy that organized that kind of operation I can see catching Shepard's attention. We know she's been flying all over the Terminus assembling a team to take on the Collectors. Have you found anything else?**

— **Kaidan**

* * *

 **[A FEW DAYS LATER]**

 _Kaidan:_

 _I'm not sure how reliable my information is. There were very few survivors of the gang assault on Archangel and his team, and still fewer that were willing to talk. From those few I obtained varied and confused testimonies, and obviously these sources were biased. Still, what I was able to piece together proved suggestive_ **.**

 _The mercenaries hit Archangel's home base in a swift, decisive strike, probably with inside help. Our Lantar Sidonis likely provided the information that led the mercenaries to the vigilante group in exchange for his own life, which would explain both his subsequent identity change and the guilt that led him to confess to C-Sec. The mercenaries' initial assault was overwhelming. I believe Archangel was absent at the time, and his entire team of ten died in the first hour. It could be that Sidonis and Archangel conspired together to hand the others over the mercenaries and Archangel felt immediate remorse, but more likely Sidonis and the mercenaries arranged to lead Archangel away from the base and hit him separately in an attempt to catch the entire team unprepared. At any rate, Archangel returned to the base, but not in time to save his team. However, despite the attacking mercenary force, my sources all agree that Archangel was able to infiltrate and secure his base._

 _After that, details become uncertain. Archangel held out alone in his base for at least thirty-six hours, but some of my sources claim the mercenaries held him at siege for as long as three days. He certainly killed dozens of mercenaries and allegedly even brought down a Blue Suns gunship at one point. Although the mercenaries had the clear advantage, I believe the different groups cooperated poorly, and allowed Archangel's reputation and constant fire to destabilize morale. At any rate, halfway through the second day of the siege, Tarak, the leader of the Blue Suns, authorized the hire of freelance mercenaries to supplement the diminishing manpower and storm Archangel in his base to buy time to come up with a better plan._

 _I think that is when Shepard comes into it. I believe you're right, and she did intend to recruit Archangel for her mission against the Collectors when the_ Normandy _first docked on Omega. Someone with Archangel's tactical and combat capabilities would be an extremely valuable asset to Shepard, and recruiting him would fit the pattern she's kept for months. I believe she also recruited Mordin Solus and Zaeed Massani while she was on Omega. I've attached files on both of them. Unfortunately, by the time I believe Shepard arrived on Omega, Archangel was already at war with the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse mercenaries. You know Shepard as well as I do, Kaidan. She isn't one to let little things like gang wars keep her from her objective. The Blue Suns hiring freelancers would have given her an in, and from what I gather, that's when the few survivors of the assault say things went wrong: when three unidentified freelancers turned on the others and joined Archangel._

 _That's all I know for certain. The fight turned bloody. Well. More so. When the smoke cleared, nearly all the mercenaries and their leaders were dead. The Blue Suns spread propaganda for weeks afterward that Archangel had been killed in the fight, but at least three of my sources claim that while they found the bodies of Archangel's team,_ Archangel's _body was never found. I suspect Shepard got her man._

 _As I said, the implications are interesting. All my sources say Archangel was a young, male turian._

 _Liara_

* * *

 **Liara,**

 **Are you implying what I think you're implying? Do you think** _ **Garrus**_ **disappeared to resurface as this Archangel person?**

— **Kaidan**

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _Here are the facts:_

 _Garrus left C-Sec two months after Shepard's death, after numerous citations for infractions against procedure and speaking out of order to higher-ranking officers. According to the last reports of him from the Citadel, he left on a shuttle bound for Omega. Executor Pallin filed a report that he believed Garrus might track a drug ring to its source and headquarters out of C-Sec and Citadel space jurisdiction on Omega, like he'd done when he left C-Sec to pursue Saren._

 _Garrus is with Shepard now, after seeing severe action_ somewhere. _I assume you noticed his extensive injuries when you ran into Shepard and Garrus on Horizon?_

 _Garrus was also definitely with Shepard when she brought down Harkin's identity operation on the Citadel. C-Sec reports confirm it. We have also confirmed that this is the operation that aided Lantar Sidonis in his efforts to drop off the grid after the gangs' war on Archangel on Omega._

 _Something or someone prompted Sidonis to turn himself in to C-Sec for his part in the deaths of Archangel's vigilante organization._

 _Given what we know about our old friend, the conclusions are perhaps not as far or difficult leaps as they might be, and it makes sense of quite a few other things, such as where Garrus disappeared to after Shepard's death and why the two of them can't seem to get along with any members of the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, or Eclipse they may meet. I'll keep looking, but I'm fairly certain Garrus did in fact go by Archangel for much of the last two years, and if I'm right, he—and Shepard—may need my help._

 _Liara_

* * *

 **Liara,**

 **I don't want to believe it, but I think you may be right. Garrus may be one of the only people in the galaxy Shepard would risk open war with these powerful mercenary groups for like she's done. For that matter, Garrus is always with her, in every report of every engagement Shepard's been in that I've seen. The mercs may be targeting Garrus as much as Shepard, or more, if they recognize either of them from any hit order off Omega and don't want it to get out that Archangel's alive. After Shepard died, after her memorial service, I knew Garrus was taking it pretty hard. You weren't there, but Tali, Chakwas, and I all noticed how angry he was, how desperate. But to turn vigilante on Omega—I don't know. And after what went down there—I had** _ **no**_ **idea.**

 **Liara, keep an eye on them for me.**

— **Kaidan**

* * *

 _Kaidan:_

 _I'm attaching a video I found of Archangel and his team on Omega. It proves what we suspected: Archangel is Garrus Vakarian._

 _I have a few resources. I'll do whatever I can to take what heat Garrus may be experiencing due to his adventures on Omega off of him. It's not much, but I owe it to Garrus, for what he did on the_ SR-1 _, and what he's doing now. I'll keep my ears open._

 _Liara_

* * *

 **A/N: I swear the posting date on this chapter is a coincidence. I didn't mean to post the Akuze chapter in "Soldier" on Veteran's Day either. It's just how things worked out. I don't actually think this is very romantic at all.**

 **But I hope** _ **you**_ **have a very happy Valentine's Day, whether it's in celebrating the people you love platonically or that very special someone,**

 **LMS**


	8. Dirty

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Bridges** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XLI, "Demon of the Night Winds: Murray and Harker," and** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XLII, "Demon of the Night Winds: Silence of the Dawn."**

* * *

VIII

Dirty

Beth had taken three showers, but she still felt dirty.

She'd redressed in sweats and her heaviest off-duty hoodie, and wrapped herself in five blankets, but she still felt too exposed, and she shivered.

Classical music, as different from the music they'd played in Afterlife as she could find, was blasting so loud from the speakers they could probably hear it in Engineering, but it didn't drown out the slimy memories of oily words, of hungry eyes and creeping hands, and foreign desires in her head.

 _"Look into my eyes and tell me you want me. Tell me you'd kill for me. Anything I want."_

Morinth's eyes had been dark pools, and Beth had very nearly drowned in them. She remembered every nerve singing, while somewhere in the back of her head, her better instincts had been screaming, beating their fists on the inside of her skull for her to say no, but she'd been a prisoner in her own head, unable to force her leaden lips to move. Morinth's arm around her shoulder had been so gentle. Morinth's hand on the back of her neck had been so soft.

How close had it been? How close had she been to accepting the meld that would have burned out her nervous system, blown up her brain, and left her a vegetable? Until she died, helpless, unable to command her lungs to expand and take in air or her heart to keep beating? Would Morinth have played with her like a cat with a mouse first? Or could it have been just a moment, just seconds after the _yes_ had been compelled from her lips?

Beth shuddered and drew the blankets tighter around her.

* * *

 _The window behind the sofa shattered and a bullet from a high-powered rifle slammed into the far wall. The crack ripped through the fog in Beth's head, and she leapt to her feet at the same time as Morinth did. All pretense of sweetness dropped as Morinth's biotics flared in alarm, and Beth hissed, furious, "Don't count on it!"_

* * *

Garrus had broken her out of Morinth's control. It'd been something he'd done on his own initiative—Shepard hadn't told him not to follow them, but Samara had wanted him to stay out of it. Beth didn't know if she would've made it until Samara arrived if Garrus hadn't taken that shot from the roof opposite Morinth's apartment, but he'd also alerted Morinth to the danger she was in, and if Samara hadn't arrived in the very next second—well.

Beth bent so her head was between her knees, trying to get a grip on her nausea. It hadn't been working for the last half hour.

* * *

 _"And they call me a monster!"_

 _Samara flung Morinth across the room again, and this time, Morinth didn't have the strength to resist her. She tried to crawl away from her advancing mother on her elbows, but Samara was standing over her before she'd even gone half a meter. Samara's eyes glowed with biotic energy, implacable, cold as stone. "Find peace in the embrace of the goddess."_

 _Beth looked away from the actual blow, but she heard the wet crunch as Samara's biotics tore Morinth's head apart. She shuddered, and for some reason, she thought of Joan Redding and an empty room at South Sixteenth way back in East Side Vancouver._

 _At the same time, she was grateful._

* * *

Beth scrubbed at her arms with her hands. They were already streaked angry red from the violent showers she'd taken since she'd returned to the _Normandy_ , but she could swear the vulnerability, the guilt, the shame was still crawling on her like vermin.

* * *

 _"What the hell was that? You said you were following them, but Morinth had damn near finished her by the time you got here!"_

 _"Please, Garrus."_

 _"I don't know why it was so damned important to do it here, anyway! Shepard knows how to conceal a weapon, but you had her come here alone with no gun when she could've just shot Morinth the second she revealed herself in Afterlife!" The electric smell of biotics mixed with the metallic smell of angry turian. With his every word, Samara quivered as if beneath a blow. Her too-bright eyes kept drifting over to the corner. There was a tic in her jaw, and she looked small. Beth had never seen her look so small._

 _"I can speak for myself, Garrus! Leave her alone. Samara just killed her daughter."_

 _"The bravest and smartest of my daughters. Please. Show mercy on a broken old warrior and let us leave this place."_

 _Shepard gestured for Samara to lead the way out of the apartment, away from the carnage that had once been Morinth. "Let's go."_

* * *

The light on her door had been flashing for thirty seconds before Beth realized someone was knocking. She couldn't hear a rap or a ring over the frantic violin and blasting trumpet.

"Go to hell!" Shepard shouted. She didn't want to talk to anyone. They'd all just say something stupid, or make her try to relive what had happened. The door kept buzzing, and Beth realized her visitor probably couldn't even hear her over the music. She sighed, and trudged over to the camera, blankets and all, fully intending to flip her visitor off, but then she saw who it was, and she stopped. She shut off the stereo, and opened the door.

"Interesting music choice, Shepard. Would not have figured you for a classicist. But blasting even instrumental music at such volume can damage human hearing. Also other species. Turian, asari, drell, quarian, salarian. Also . . . a distraction."

Beth pulled a face. "Yeah, for me too. Well, I'd hoped it'd be. But I'm sorry I interrupted your work, Mordin. I know it's important."

Mordin looked her up and down. "Four, no, _five_ blankets. Temperature of room normal for human comfort levels. Fever? No, no flush, no sweat. _Psychological_ reaction, not physical. Reaction to latest mission with Ardat-Yakshi."

The matter-of-fact, super-speed diagnosis opened Beth up just like anyone else's compassionate probing would have shut her down. "She almost had me, Mordin. If Garrus hadn't—I don't know if I could've held out much longer. She got into my head, and she made me . . . she made me—God, she needed to die. But watching Samara kill her, even so . . ." Beth clutched the blankets around her. She couldn't stop shaking.

Mordin watched her, concerned. "Ardat-Yakshi have _powerful_ effect. Even salarians not immune, despite comparative lack of sex drive. Normal reaction, Shepard. Nothing to be ashamed of. Held out longer than most."

Beth shook her head. "You don't understand. I'm not even . . . I don't even like women like that. And even if I did, _I knew what she was_. God, I saw what she left behind. I heard her in that club—Morinth was an idiot, Mordin! I don't care how smart Samara says she was. It was all a front, her so-called sophistication, totally shallow. She was completely vapid and vacuous, and ridiculously violent for no damn reason. I _saw_ all of that. I _knew_ all of that. But _I wanted her anyway_."

Mordin waved a hand. "Mental suggestion," he explained. "Asari ability, heightened . . . and abused . . . in Ardat-Yakshi."

Beth glared at him. "I know what it was! My emotional processing hasn't caught up to it, though. Forgive me for not possessing a salarian's speed in such matters."

Mordin smiled. "Don't expect you to have salarian emotional processing. Human. Different." He tapped a finger on his chin. "Perhaps untainted sexual encounter could . . . recalibrate equilibrium. Have you studied pamphlets on turian-human relations?"

Beth took a physical step back and turned away. "Thanks for reminding me about that little talk we had last week. I was trying to forget that ever happened. Nice idea— _lame_ joke—but the last thing I want when I'm feeling this vulnerable is sex."

"Vulnerability usual in human sexual relations, especially among females," Mordin observed, curious. Beth crossed her arms.

"Yeah. No. Not for me. Sex is sex. Emotions have nothing to do with it. I'll be fine, Mordin. I'll stop blasting the music."

Mordin regarded her for a second. "Nervous movement. Forced smile. All tells of dishonesty in humans. Hollow assertion."

"That I'm fine? Pretty much," Beth agreed. "Lying my ass off. I will stop blasting the music, though." Oddly, however, she did feel somewhat better. She tossed her blankets back on top of the bed. "Let's try something else, okay? Let's go down to the lab and you can tell me what you've found out about the Collectors lately. Go over all those operations I was interrupting with my music."

Mordin lit up, pleased to have a solution. "Distraction, yes! Push emotional response to back of the mind until internal chemistry has regulated. Fear of Ardat-Yakshi. Guilt at response. Gratitude to Samara. Disgust at mother killing child . . . whatever reason. Reasonable coping technique, Shepard, for a human. So long as emotions are dealt with later."

"Yeah. Later," Beth said wryly. "Right now, I want to be distracted, remember? Not hear everything that's going through my head and pumping through my bloodstream."

But he was so sensible, so quick and quirky and kind without being overbearing in the least. Beth really didn't mind the awkwardness. Not really.

"Come. Will show you work. Made breakthrough: based on Prothean-Collector connection, can examine technology, chart Reaper species modification. Fall of Protheans."

"Really? Tell me about it."

Beth followed Mordin out of her cabin and into the elevator as he began to do so, in comprehensive and technical detail. She took in another deep breath, and this time, as Mordin's science-babble filled her ears at hyper-speeds, mostly fascinating and helpful but also at least 20 percent incomprehensible, the nausea did dissipate a little, and she smiled.

* * *

 **A/N: Because a) a very near experience with what would have been a fatal mind- and possibly bodily rape has to be incredibly traumatic, especially when Shepard might not have been interested in the first place but could have been unable to resist, and b) Mordin deserves a focus chapter too. I love him, and I think my cerebral, reserved Beth Shepard would as well.**

 **Obviously there's a little bit more to this story. You'll get it in time in** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **, but as you can see, it'll be a long while. It'll be a week and a half before SG catches up to this story's chapter 3—after this one's over and done with.**

 **The markers are for those of you that read this later, or come back to it when SG is over for another look at Shepard's head. These stories aren't really meant to be read together—and they have very different purposes and styles—but they certainly can be if you'd like.**

 **Best,**

 **LMS**


	9. Strings Attached

_**Sometimes Grace**_ **Continuity: Concurrent with** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **XLVIII, "Tesseract."**

* * *

IX

Strings Attached

The music was god-awful, Garrus couldn't even drink the stupid wine with her, and they only had a couple hours, anyway. And now he was babbling, and Beth Shepard felt at least as idiotic as Garrus looked. God, he'd had his signs up in blazing neon, from the weird insecurity he'd shown in their conversations after her proposition to his reaction to what had gone down with Morinth. How the hell had she missed that whatever and whoever he'd done in the past, when it came down to it, Garrus wouldn't just be _blowing off steam_ with her? She should've shut things down weeks ago.

He was still babbling. ". . . I knew I should've watched the vids."

Before she knew what she was doing, Shepard had crossed the floor to him and put two fingers over his mouth. "Hey. Hey. It's alright," she was saying. "Consider me seduced, okay? Shut up and stop worrying. You're much sexier when you're not trying." The left corner of her mouth quirked up. "But it's cute that you're trying."

With her other hand, she turned off the crap pounding through the stereo. She dropped the hand covering his mouth. Almost as if he couldn't help himself, Garrus caught her fingers as they fell. Tentative, so gentle.

 _Damn._

"I just . . . I've seen so many things go wrong, Shepard," Although Garrus' voice was little louder than a whisper, the tones vibrating underneath it were strong enough to send tremors through the floor, up Beth's feet and spine. Heat unfurled in her belly like it hadn't in more than a lifetime. "My work at C-Sec, what happened with Sidonis…I want something to go right. Just once. Just . . ."

Beth had hoped nothing could touch her anymore, but the pain in her chest testified against her as the whole mess of strings Garrus had attached cut into her gut and tore her heart.

 _Oh, you idiot. You just had to bring feelings into the room with you. We could die, Garrus. You, me, or both, and then where will we be? Where will we be if we live, if we do this now?_

Beth Shepard smiled up at her favorite person in the entire galaxy—smiled, so she didn't start crying. There could be no more bluffing. If these were to be her last two hours alive, she wanted to spend them with him, even if Garrus was coming to her now with more complications than she'd ever wanted. Beth reached over to take Garrus's other hand in hers.

His hands were ungloved at last. His skin was warmer than a human's, more like leather in the sun than anything else. She noticed he'd filed his talons, so they were blunt, friendly. He'd planned ahead. Beth turned Garrus's hands palm out, and brought first one, then the other to her lips, kissing them both.

 _Here's if you die, and here's so you live, Garrus Vakarian. And for an hour and a bit, I'll forget about_ never again, _for you, because it really_ might _be_ never again. _Right here, right now, I can give you this much. Just this once, I can make things go right. Even if all_ I _wanted was wrong, easy, uncomplicated and safe._

She didn't say a word, but Garrus understood what she was offering anyway. More than _stress relief_ , more than sex. Although she didn't think he'd meant to do so, Garrus had come asking for every bit of her tonight, and he was going to get it, but as Beth watched him, she realized he hadn't really expected he would. His eyes widened, and then blazed with something Beth could name, if she dared.

She closed her eyes. She didn't dare.

Garrus turned his hands to cup her face, and touched her forehead with his own. A turian approximation of a kiss, she guessed. Beth shivered once, tense with anticipation.

 _God, I should've known better._

* * *

Garrus had predicted interspecies awkwardness, and there was some of that. There was a moment when Beth didn't know how to take off his pants and caught his spurs by mistake, and another when he wasn't quite sure what to make of her bra. Then both of them had been a little taken aback by strangenesses of anatomy. She'd been bemused and a little surprised to find out the way turian packaging had evolved to the strength of Palaven's sun, and when she'd taken her shoes off, Garrus had taken a few moments to remark on the absurdity of human feet.

In the end, there was more that was exciting and wonderful than strange. They touched. They tasted, when they grew a little bolder, and when they'd come together at last, Shepard had shocked herself with the totality of her surrender.

The silence now was so full it was a symphony in its own right. The air was cool on her skin. She wondered if it was cold on Garrus's warmer body. He didn't seem to mind though. He ran his fingers through her hair, transfixed. It was unbound for once, twisted and tangled over her pillow and upper body. Beth's hands were busy, too, tracing patterns over the pebbled plating across Garrus's chest and shoulders as her mind raced. She wanted to fix the last hour and a bit in her mind for all time, something to carry with her into the battle, a better reason than _we have to beat the bad guys_ to fight to _live_. Still, somehow, she was once again halfway hoping she _didn't_ live too. It was all too much _._

God, if she'd known, she would have never had the guts to follow through. She'd been completely unprepared for this. In a way, it was almost precisely how she'd felt over Alchera two years ago. Spaced. Windmilling frantically to find a leg to stand on, something to hold. Running out of air. Drowning, then burning. Completely out of control. Powerless.

Except she was burning from the inside, drowning in her head, and the heaviness in her limbs and the fire in her bones was wonderful. But Beth knew, knew from cruel experience that the way she felt now was every bit as dangerous as being spaced over Alchera.

Shepard had promised herself that she wouldn't let sleeping with Garrus change anything. But when Garrus had brought his heart in his hands to her cabin, she'd reacted with a passion that made a lie of all her pretensions to indifference, and now _everything_ had changed.

She knew he knew it, too, and Beth thought Garrus had an idea of how she felt about it. He was watching her, focused on her face with the same intensity he directed down the scope of his rifle, or at the Thanix when he was calibrating. "I've never seen _that_ look on _you_ before," he murmured, breaking the silence at last. "That's the way new recruits to the turian military look just before their first bad fight, right when they're deciding if they're going to stand their ground or cut and run. You alright, Shepard? It wasn't . . . bad, was it?"

Beth winced before she could help herself, despised herself for wincing. "Spirits, it was, wasn't it?" Garrus asked, alarmed. He started to move away, embarrassed.

Beth clutched him tighter and rushed to reassure him. "No! It was good! Better than good, really. Amazing."

Garrus kept watching her, and when he saw she was still disturbed his mandibles tightened. "What's the problem then, Shepard?"

"Not Shepard," Beth blurted before she could stop herself. "Not here." She winced again, pushed at him slightly. "God, I am naked in your arms, and we both might be dead in an hour. So just once, before we both get up—Beth, okay? Beth."

The sheet had wound up on the floor in the past hour, so now Garrus could look down the length of her entire body, and he did. He wasn't wearing his visor anymore, but he still looked like he was saving her to a drive to remember forever. "Beth," he repeated, all low and intense, catching her eye again. She shivered at the sound of her name from his mouth, and his mandibles flared. "So it _was_ good," he concluded with satisfaction. "Still . . . not what you expected?" he guessed.

He waited for an answer, but Shepard didn't reply, and Garrus seemed to sense he'd hit the mark. He hesitated before speaking her first name again, so new to them. "Beth, I don't know what's going to happen, either. Spirits, I never thought it'd be—"

Beth rolled over and away, before he could say what it had been and make it real. "We'll arrive at the Omega-4 relay in less than half an hour," she told him. "We should hit the showers and gear up."

Garrus sat up. As Shepard reached for her sweats, on the table near the bed, she could feel his eyes, like laser points on the back of his spine. He hummed, a sound that was both agreement and recognition that he'd heard what she wasn't saying. "Collectors won't wait."

"They took _our_ people," Shepard said, as if she needed to justify herself. "They can't."

"Rescue or bust, then?" She heard him gathering his own clothes now. "Huh. Good chance we'll bust anyway."

Shepard stopped in the act of pulling on her pants and turned around. "No. I said this isn't a suicide mission, and you'd _better_ not make me a liar, Garrus. You're surviving, okay? You're _going_ to live." The thought of the galaxy without Garrus Vakarian was unbearable.

Garrus raised his hand to her face. His thumb brushed up and down over her cheek. "We _both_ will. What do you say we celebrate together?"

Shepard closed her eyes, and allowed herself to lean into his touch, just for a second, before breaking away and standing. She finished pulling on her pants and had her tank on in another second. "We . . . we'll see."

She wanted to. God, she wanted to, but she'd never meant it to be like this. She'd never wanted strings attached. But now it didn't matter what she'd wanted. She'd been tied up in his damn strings, and she could just feel Garrus interpreting all the mixed signals she was sending him with the benefit of two years of close friendship, adapting new battle tactics for a longer engagement.

"Hmm." In the single syllable Beth heard the crosshairs settling on her once again. This time she had a feeling they wouldn't fall away like they had in the market district on Zakera Ward.

 _Scoped . . ._

Shepard swallowed and practically ran for the showers again.


	10. The Bravest of Us

**_Sometimes Grace_ Continuity: Concurrent with (but off-page of) _Sometimes Grace_ LIII: "Uriel."**

* * *

X

The Bravest of Us

Shepard watched the crew from the doorway of the portside observatory. Kasumi had opened her room and its bar to the entire ship to celebrate their victory over the Collectors. The booze was flowing, the music was booming, and everyone was dancing the I-can't-believe-we-survived-that dance. Grunt's eyes were glittering, and he was yelling about how fun the battle had been. He was ready to have an I-can't-believe-we-survived-that fight. The first few buttons of Kelly's shirt were undone, and her hair was artfully ruffled. She had a drink in one hand and was gyrating provocatively right in the middle of the floor. She was _damn_ ready to have I-can't-believe-we-survived-that sex. Probably wouldn't matter who with.

Garrus was dancing with Tali and Samara, but he'd looked Beth's way more than once. That last was definitely on his mind. Beth's, too, if she were honest. She imagined how it might play out, and the hair rose up on her forearms and the back of her neck. Her guess was much more vivid now. She wanted him so badly it was a physical ache. If it weren't for the damn _feelings_ , Beth figured she might have jumped Garrus the second the _Normandy_ had passed back through the relay and into Sahrabarik. Because there were the feelings, she hadn't, but she knew she'd only be able to hold out so long. A limb, once injured, was always more vulnerable to a second break.

She'd break. She and Garrus needed to talk. But not just yet. For now, Shepard knew she was needed elsewhere. There were plans to be made and things to be done.

She gave it less than an hour before it hit Jack. Not that Jack hadn't been preparing for a break from Cerberus the entire time she'd been aboard. Shepard had seen her, looting all the spare credits she could, and she just bet Jack hadn't limited her research to her own past with the access Shepard had given her. If Jack didn't have a nice little package of dirty Cerberus laundry to sell for passage and protection now, she was stupider than Shepard thought. But right now, Jack was living it up with the rest of them, elbow deep in snacks to replenish her energy and boasting loudly and enthusiastically to Daniels about her part in their run through the seeker swarms.

Only one person was absent from the festivities. Shepard left the observation deck, and headed to the XO office. Miranda was sitting at her desk as usual. She'd grabbed a drink from the party, but hers wasn't celebratory. Her long fingers shook as she held the glass. She was normally pale. Just now, she was bone white.

Shepard sat in the chair opposite her XO. "Thirty minutes to an hour before Mordin gets bored with celebrating," she said. "Waste of time, he'll say. Work to do, he'll say. If you want, we'll ask him the second he comes out if he can utilize his contacts in the salarian STG to get Oriana out again, away from where Cerberus can use her as a hostage."

Miranda's eyes, before glassy and panicked, focused. "Shepard . . . would he?" she asked hopefully. "I have my own contacts, of course, but—"

"People that have never been affiliated with Cerberus will be better," Shepard finished, nodding. "He'll want to help. Mordin's like that. And if I ask him, it'll get done fast, too."

"I sent an email to Oriana the second we got back to the ship. None of the others realize the position we're in yet," Miranda said worriedly.

"We're in a deep pile of shit," Shepard agreed. "Survived the suicide mission against all odds, but broke from Cerberus and stole their multi-million-credit ship. And, you know—the multi-billion-credit me." She grimaced.

"It's funny," Miranda said, "But if Joker hadn't unshackled EDI, we might be in a much worse position now."

"I thought she'd be on our side," Shepard said, with some smugness, she had to admit. "EDI?"

"You are my shipmates," came EDI's clear, sweet voice from the empty air. "The Illusive Man has already attempted to seize control of the _Normandy_. He will not succeed." The last words had a lovely, steely quality to them. Shepard smiled.

"We owe you one, EDI."

"You owe me seventeen," EDI replied. "That was a joke," she added after a moment.

If it was, it probably wasn't too far from the truth, Shepard thought. She wondered just how many times the Illusive Man _had_ tried to hack the _Normandy_ in the past two hours. "Yeah, keep working on the humor," she advised the AI. She looked back at Miranda. "EDI's alright," she said, quoting Joker. "Like Legion. AIs thinking for themselves don't always have to be bad, it turns out. Knowing she'd probably stand with us is what let me tell the Illusive Man to go to hell, instead of trying to lie and figure out what to do later. EDI'll buy us some time, at least."

"Of course she's on our side," Miranda said. "On your side. You . . . you're _Shepard_. How could she not be?" There was still some bitterness in her voice, and a lot of fear.

Beth reached across the desk and gripped Miranda's forearm. It was ice cold. "Don't think I don't know what you risked back there, supporting me. You have everything to lose, and you backed me up and did the right thing even though it hurt. Your loyalty means more than the whole rest of the squad's because it cost you so much. You're the bravest of us all, and I'm going to make damn sure you don't regret it."

Miranda's face softened just a little. "That Reaper was an abomination," she said. "What the Collectors did to all those people was monstrous. The place needed to be destroyed. You were right. I won't regret my decision. But I can take care of myself, you know."

Beth held up both hands, gently mocking. "Far be it from me to deny it." She dropped them and met Miranda's gaze. "But you won't have to," she promised.

Miranda sat back in her chair, relaxing. She smiled, just barely. "You know," she said, "Over the two years I spent rebuilding you, I grew . . . attached to you, Shepard. I read your files over and over, a hundred times. I told myself a hundred stories of how it would be when you woke up, how we'd save the galaxy together. For a while after you woke up I hated you. You were everything I thought you would be, but I felt like you didn't need me anymore. But you . . . eventually you gave me a chance after all. And here we are."

Shepard blinked. It had never occurred to her what had gone through Miranda's head over the time she'd spent heading the Lazarus Project, the intimacy Miranda might have formed with the expectation of what Shepard would be. Suddenly, much more of Miranda's seeming hostility at the beginning of their acquaintance made sense. Not merely fear of her growing dependence on Shepard, but a reaction to Shepard's own initial distrust, to being a stranger to the woman she'd built from nothing. Hurt as an attachment Miranda had already had in place was rejected. Shepard stared.

"I—I never even thanked you, did I?" she realized, a little stupidly. "I never thanked you, for everything you did for me. You . . . God, you _brought me back to life_ , and I _never even thanked you_."

"I understand why you didn't," Miranda said quietly. "You hardly came back to a life you wanted to be in, after all."

"No, I didn't," Shepard agreed. "And to be honest, I'm still not sure you did the right thing. But, Miranda . . . you did the impossible, and that merits recognition. And—good or bad . . ." she chuckled a little. "I'm damn glad to be alive."

" _You_ did the impossible," Miranda disagreed. "I didn't think it could be done, Shepard, but we are _all_ alive. _You_ got us out of there." She laughed, too. "And we may be in serious trouble with the Illusive Man, but damn it, I'm glad to be alive, too. We've saved the galaxy together. I . . . I can't tell you how much it means to me."

She took another sip of her drink, and this time it wasn't just to steady her nerves.

"But it won't be the end, will it?" she asked, after she'd swallowed. "Not just with Cerberus."

Shepard looked her straight in the eye. "No. Miranda, this was just the beginning. Cerberus is the least of our problems, really. God, you thought I'd pissed off the Reapers before? I don't like this Harbinger. They'll be coming now, for real. I don't know how. I don't know when. But I'll just bet it's soon."

"Well, until then, there is a question of what next," Miranda said, rallying.

"Liara," Shepard answered at once. She wasn't entirely happy about it. She and Liara hadn't parted on the best of terms after the asari had admitted to giving her body to Cerberus three years ago. "A few weeks ago the Illusive Man forwarded us information she could use to find the Shadow Broker. Just another bribe, but now'd be a good time to act on it."

Miranda raised an eyebrow. "With EDI on our side and the Shadow Broker defeated, the Illusive Man will have no way to keep tabs on our movements." Her lips turned up in appreciation. "Total information blackout."

"That's the plan," Shepard confirmed. "Anyway, docking on Illium will allow us to make the necessary repairs to the _Normandy_. After we help Liara take out the Broker, we go investigate the Overlord cell like the Illusive Man asked us, too, and whatever trouble they've got there, we make _sure_ it shuts the project down. We start fires wherever we can, using whatever information anyone can give us. We start enough fires, maybe we can slow Mr. Illusive down long enough, hurt him enough he won't be able to catch us."

Miranda laughed once. "How long have you been planning this?"

"A while," Shepard admitted. She glanced at Miranda. "That okay?" she asked.

Miranda spread her hands on the desk. "Shepard, we're in the same boat now," she said. "No one just quits Cerberus. I'll do whatever I can to help."

"I knew I could count on you," Shepard said.

"I will tell Jeff to set a course for Illium." EDI said from her speaker.

"Thanks, EDI," Beth called.

"You are welcome, Shepard."

"In the meantime, since Kelly is busy, I should probably inform you that a message came in for you, Commander," Miranda told her. "From Alliance Command."

Shepard took in a breath. For months the Alliance had been ignoring her transmissions. Now, for whatever reason, they were willing to acknowledge her resurrection and existence again? It could be a way out. But it could mean something really bad had happened. "Alliance Command?"

Miranda nodded. "Yes. Admiral Hackett, I believe. Given the circumstances, it might be a good idea to see what he wants."

Shepard was already standing to leave. "You're right. I'll take the message at my private terminal in my quarters."

* * *

 **A/N: Had to touch on this again before we left this story, because I actually really like Miranda. My Shepard** _ **has**_ **to strongly dislike and distrust her at the opening of** _ **ME2**_ **, but the two of them have more in common than they don't. In fact, because I see Tali (and eventually EDI) as more like family to Beth, because Garrus gets a complicated upgrade, and because Liara and Kaidan get mixed up with feelings that can never really be made right, I believe Miranda eventually becomes Beth Shepard's best friend.**

 **I wanted to end here, with friendship and at the opening of the DLC, rather than with Garrus. You see, nothing is resolved here, which is the reason I never closed a relationship parenthesis around the two in my description. Garrus may be in love with Beth, but even if Beth does reciprocate, she's still extremely conflicted about it. Garrus, maybe despite himself, has begun being honest in actions if not in words about what he's really looking for. Beth has to take some time to work through her issues and be really honest with herself, and since she's been operating from a place of fear and dysfunction in her love life for years, it's gonna take a while. A sniper's patience will serve Garrus well here.**

 **Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed** _ **Disaster Zone: Resurrection**_ **. My special thanks to those of you who regularly took the time to drop a line of encouragement after a chapter. This particular part of the story went up at a really difficult time in my life; knowing and hearing that my fic was brightening other peoples' days brightened mine. You guys have been a blessing to me.**

 **There are two more parts in the Disaster Zone series:** _ **Shepard**_ **, which covers the majority of** _ **ME3**_ **, and** _ **New World**_ **, which does not deal with** _ **Andromeda**_ **despite its title. (My friend was able to purchase and play that game before I could and told me it wasn't worth it; since she was the one that got me into Mass Effect in the first place, I took her word, especially since reviews backed her up.)** _ **New World**_ **actually deals with the aftermath of the Reaper War in the Milky Way—when the entire "world" is different because of what has happened.**

 **However, as I mentioned before, this series will be going on hiatus for a time. I was willing to mess with the timelines with** _ **DZ:R**_ **and** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **; they're both** _ **ME2**_ **stories, after all. But my disorganization has limits. I won't proceed through** _ **ME3**_ **and beyond while Garrus is still shooting his way through** _ **ME2**_ **. My head just can't take it. The rest of The Disaster Zone will begin posting when** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **is complete.**

 **In the meantime, if you haven't already, check out the earlier stories in the series. The first three fics are devoted entirely to Beth Shepard backstory. If some of what she's doing now confuses you, you'll probably find an answer there.**

 **I will continue to update** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **every Saturday, so I'm not going silent. Maybe you're already reading over there. If you are, this isn't goodbye! See you Saturday. If you aren't, you might like to come join us. Get Garrus's take on an** _ **ME2**_ **novelization. However, since he IS a turian war nerd and the violence in the fic is written with that in mind, I completely respect it if you want to stay over here. The DZ fics are a bit more discreet. I hope I will see you when they return!**

 **Best Always, and Thank You,**

 **LMSharp**


End file.
